Career Advancement 3: Liquidation
by Two Ladies of Quality
Summary: The Watchers made their move against Giles and failed, with high prices on both sides. The Aurelians are still in Sunnydale, and want to hide their own plots behind Fleur du Mal's plan to win the leadership of the clan over Spike's dead body.
1. Chapter 1

The nights in Sunnydale were getting cooler now. Fleur du Mal occasionally missed the sultry nights of her native Senegal; her first European winter had nearly killed her. She still did not enjoy the cold, but she'd learned to appreciate how it made the prey more sluggish and easier to catch. Tonight's dinner had worn ill-fitting boots against the earlier rain and hadn't been able to run when he saw his death appear out of the shadows.

She reached out with a delicate tip of the tongue to catch the last spot of blood in the corner of her mouth, then she sat in her favorite chair and rang the little bell on the table next to her. Her slave came out of the master suite's bathroom and knelt beside her, leaning against her knees. Fleur leaned down to kiss the top of his head. "Yes, my dear, I'm home." She rubbed the side of his face and noticed the faint bristle of whiskers. "You didn't shave, petite. Were you wanting me to do it?" She chuckled at the hesitant, hopeful glance her slave sent her from the corner of his eye. "After I've rested. Undo my hair now."

She leaned back and closed her eyes, enjoying the feel of her slave's nimble fingers as he pulled out the myriad pins holding up the long braids and massaged her scalp. The sound of footsteps at her door made her open her eyes. "Ah, Paul."

"I heard the bell and knew you had returned," Paul said, bowing with his finest manners. "I dislike you going out by yourself."

"The vaunted Hellmouth is quiet these days. Have you heard anything?" A languid gesture granted permission for him to seat himself in a nearby chair.

"One of Spike's minions was at that horrid Willy's place tonight, telling stories for free drinks. Maurice called me, so I was able to get the word as close to first hand as is possible."

"Is it true? Is Drusilla dust?"

Paul sighed and nodded. "It is true."

Fleur's grief for the loss to Clan Aurelius was legitimate, for all she had intended to achieve Drusilla's destruction herself. There were not so many vampires of age and lineage about that the loss of one should pass unmarked. "Tell me what this minion said."

"The Council of Watchers was in town. They were hunting Ripper. Those tales are true, by the way, he was the current Slayer's own Watcher when Drusilla turned him. A fearsome foe in his own right, warrior and sorcerer. A fitting Aurelian."

"But of Angelus' line."

Paul smiled faintly. "Yes, and bearing in full the quixotic tendencies of that heritage. He and Spike fought at the side of the Slayer while facing the Hellgod Glory and were instrumental in her destruction. The minion Fred hinted that there are still ties between Ripper and the Slayer's coterie."

"And the Watchers finally came to erase the blot on their membership."

"Led by Travers, the current head of their Council. Weeks ago Angelus appeared as well, bearing word of our presence here, warning Spike that you intend to challenge him."

Fleur drummed her fingers on the chair arm. "Angelus still bears enough concern for Spike that he would bring a warning?"

"Less concern for Spike himself, in the minion's opinion, but more concern for the Hellmouth. Angelus would not have it fall into our hands."

"Hm, I hadn't considered the Hellmouth. Our Master lusted after its power, but I am not the sorcerer he was." She waved her hand. "Soon enough when I lead Aurelius to concern myself over the Hellmouth. So Angelus trusts Spike to have custodianship over this place?"

"William the Bloody has always preferred to maintain the status quo. He has an unhealthy appreciation for the trappings of humanity."

They shared a small shudder of disgust.

"And then Drusilla arrived," Fleur said, "bringing very nearly the entire Angeliad line together."

Paul nodded. "Fred mentioned something about magic and the Initiative's chip that had leashed Spike and how Drusilla and Ripper had somehow cooperated to remove it. But he wasn't very clear on that portion."

He shifted uneasily before continuing. "Which brings us to the other night. The Watchers went to Spike's lair with full intention to destroy all inside. They brought crossbows and stakes and one of their magical weapons." He leaned forward. "And one of the Slayer's minions got there first, bearing warning to Spike that the Watchers were coming."

She sat up as far as she could with her slave working on her hair. "One of the Slayer's--"

"A boy, who has fought at the Slayer's side since her arrival here, who has acquitted himself well in her fight. He apparently found out the Watchers' plans and went to Spike to warn him. And Angelus was at his side."

"And how many drinks had this minion had before he told this tale?"

"Not enough to affect a vampire, and no one at the bar was surprised to hear of it. Spike is known to have interest in this boy. Willy, the proprietor, nodded and said that warning a vampire was the sort of thing the boy would do, if the boy thought dishonor was involved."

Fleur began to smile. "And what was our dear William the Bloody's reaction to having the Slayer's boy, as well as his erstwhile sire, coming to his own lair to warn him?"

"Spike thanked the boy, and when the Watchers attacked, he ordered Angelus to get the boy to safety--and Angelus obeyed."

Her smiled broadened. "How very interesting. A human boy, one of the Slayer's minions. Most interesting." She sobered. "Tell me of Drusilla and the Watchers."

"The Watchers threatened Angelus as well. The boy defied the Watchers, Drusilla moved forward--and then she was gone. Spike ordered Angelus out with the boy before he and Ripper and the others swarmed the Watchers. None but the Watchers' leader survived."

"As it should be, though 'tis a pity their leader escaped. Where is everyone now?"

"The Watcher has left. Spike, Ripper, and most of their folk survive. Angelus has disappeared, and his minions have also left town."

"And this boy?"

"The minion did not remember his name. We can find him with some effort, though."

"I can tell you about that boy," said a new voice. A human stood in Fleur's doorway, smirking and not showing nearly enough fear. Warren something, Fleur reminded herself. A human who dabbled in black arts of both human and magical design and who had approached her with an idea.

"You know this boy?" she asked casually.

Warren smiled. "I know him, I know all the Slayer's people. And as I told you before, I can help you deal with the Slayer, and while she's dealing with you, she's not messing up my work."

"Indeed, you did say that." She reached out to stroke Paul's cheek with the back of her fingers. "But what do you know of the boy that would interest me?"

He stepped farther into the room. "His name is Xander Harris, he has no powers of his own except for being gung ho and lucky."

Fleur didn't look away from Paul, who gazed back with a slight smile. "Do not dismiss luck, my Warren. If one must have only two advisors, choose one that is wise and one that is lucky."

Warren hmphed. "From our observations, Spike will intervene if he finds out Xander is in trouble. He was spotted in a cemetery about a week ago talking to Xander and not doing much in the way of getting rid of your biggest enemy's minions."

"My biggest enemy is not the Slayer. She is a threat, but there is always a Slayer. Vampires have survived her sort before."

"Dismissing her is dangerous," Warren said. "She's strong and clever, and she doesn't like things that mess with her town. She's saved the world. A lot."

Fleur smiled and relaxed once more into her slave's ministrations. "Ah, but I am not a threat to the world. Only to Spike. I have seen the Slayer," she said, interrupting Warren. "She is formidable, possibly the best of the line. She hunts the rash ones, the ones who have no subtlety. There is no reason for her eye to be drawn to me and mine."

"She and Spike have some sort of understanding. If he's threatened, she might move."

Paul chuckled. "It would take a very unconventional Slayer indeed to defend one vampire against another."

"Yes, it would. And that's what we have, a very unconventional Slayer."

Fleur's raised hand stopped Paul's next words. "It would be foolish to ignore information on a potential foe," she said. She indicated another empty chair. "Sit with us, Warren. Tell us of the Slayer and her minions. I'm particularly interested in those who fight at her side."

Paul sat back and raised one hand to hide his understanding smile.

***

Monday morning, the alarm went off at what is always going to be an ungodly hour of the morning. Xander Harris reached over and squashed the noise. The snooze bar was considered, then discarded as an option. He got up, glanced at the shrouded sliding glass doors that led to the balcony, then went to the bathroom.

As he brushed his teeth, he finally looked up and met his own eyes in the mirror. It felt daring, somehow, as if he hadn't dared look himself in the face for quite some time. Parts of him still did cringe, the parts that knew he was going to have to tell Buffy what had happened while she was off to the beach for the weekend with her mom and Dawn. A couple of those parts wondered if he could have done something different, if maybe he had come down on the wrong side, if he should have done something that would have minimized the bloodshed. But that was only regret, not guilt.

He had done what he'd done, and he didn't regret it. If he hadn't done it, then he might not be able to look himself in the eye now. There might be some arguments when everything came out, but for now, he was good.

A quick breakfast, a quick slurp of coffee, then he was out the door.

He greeted the guys at the construction site the way he always did, and he ignored all the looks and whispers that weren't aimed at him. He stopped by the schedule board outside the field office trailer to find out what progress had been made in his week off.

"Harris!"

Xander looked over his shoulder. "Hey, Sam. Looks like you're ready to start the drywall up on the third floor. How did laying the conduit go?"

Sam the foreman just stared at him. "You're back."

Xander shrugged and smiled. "You did give me only a week off." He looked Sam in the eye, not quite daring him to say something along the lines of the conversation Xander had overheard between the foreman and Mr. Simak, the site boss.

"Yeah, but--"

He saw Sam's eyes go to the small bandage on his throat. Sunnydalians knew what a wound there meant, if they just gave it half a thought. Sam then actually glanced up towards the sun, and Xander managed not to laugh. The wound on his arm was healing well, and he'd baby it as much as he could. The mark of Spike's fangs wasn't quite faded enough to leave it uncovered.

"How was your week off?" Sam asked slowly.

Xander shrugged. "It was a week in Sunnydale. Caught up on some sleep, hung with some friends. The usual."

"The usual." Sam's eyes went to the bandage again.

"Well, usual for me. Where do you want me, on the second floor finishing the surfacing or up on third doing prep?"

He felt a little twinge for being hardline about it, but the Xander Harris who had been thrown off the site a week ago had died at Spike's hands in that cemetery. And if his supervisors didn't have any respect for the man he normally was, then he wanted to know now.

Sam looked him over one more time, hesitating briefly at the bandage, then he met Xander's gaze and grinned. "I need you on second, confirming that all the conduit is clear. I had Martin check it on Friday, but he didn't take nearly as long at it as I think he should have. I want someone I can trust telling me that we're ready to close up the walls."

Xander nodded. "Will do, boss."

Sam turned to go, then paused. "Try to make it a while before your next vacation, Xander. We need you around here."

"I'll tell my sickly relatives to buck up and get better."

"Right."

Xander headed over to the tool shed to pick up the equipment he need, grinning to himself as he heard Sam heading up the steps into the field office. He debated sneaking around to eavesdrop again, but he had work to do.

****

Tara carefully picked the bits of bedding out of Rat Amy's water bowl, then stirred up the food in her bowl. "If you didn't sleep in the food bowl," she told the little creature, "then it wouldn't get mashed down." Amy wiggled her whiskers. "Would you like any new toys? Your little rolly wheel is looking kind of chewed on. Does that mean you like it or that you don't?"

Willow looked up from her desk and smiled. "Has she ever answered you in a way that could be considered intelligent? Or does she give you the same attention she would to peanut butter?"

Tara sighed. "I think she cares more about the peanut butter, truth be told." Miss Kitty jumped up onto the dresser where Amy's cage sat, and Amy zipped into her ceramic mushroom hidey-hole. "Stop scaring her," Tara told the cat. "We don't know if her health is based on being a young woman or an old rat."

Willow hmphed. "I really thought we would have found a way to fix her by now." She glared at her various books. "As happy as I am that classes are starting tomorrow, there's still so many other things I need to study. Maybe it's a restoration spell we need for Amy, not a specific reversal. Some sort of general 'put this back as it was' spell."

Tara picked up Miss Kitty and went to sit on the bed. "That could be dangerous," she offered carefully. "Imagine if you cast something like that on your desk, it could fall apart into boards, or logs."

"More likely glue and plastic," Willow grinned. The grin went thoughtful. "How would the spell know what state you wanted? Would it pull the information from your mind or would you need to program it into the variables? Do those kinds of spells even have variables?"

"Like how wishes with genies always go bad because the genie finds a loophole or answers the wish literally."

"I always thought genies were just being perverse." She ran her fingers from her psychology text books to her current spell research books. "The question seems to come down to intent," she murmured. "There has to be a way to determine intent so that the result can be accurately predicted. If you could tell a genie to grant a wish in a way that's favorable to the wisher . . ." She flicked open the cover of a book and began flipping pages.

Tara swallowed hard. "The universe isn't a computer, Willow. It can't be programmed."

"Well, no, not easily, but it all comes down to chemistry and atoms. We give depressed people drugs, and it balances out the brain chemistry, and they can function again. You should be able to do a spell to do the same thing--and you wouldn't have all those nasty drugs in your blood stream!" Willow flipped through books with more interest.

"That wouldn't be a bad thing," Tara said slowly. "Magical psychotherapy. But you'd have to know so much about the individual brain chemistry of a person before you did anything. You can't just wave your hand at someone and say 'Stop being depressed'."

Willow looked up, eyes wide. "Ooo, wouldn't that be nice? Throw some herbs at some icky creature and say 'Stop being evil'?" She drummed her fingers on the desktop. "But if it was possible, surely the Watchers would have figured it out. It would be a whole lot safer than sending out Slayers. But, wow, the scale of that kind of magic, to make all the monsters stop being monsters."

Tara held Miss Kitty close, using the cat's warmth against her sudden shiver. "In addition to the fact that it's wrong to use magic to force a sentient being to behave the way you think it should." Tara blushed as Willow blinked at her for the sharp tone of voice, but she refused to look away or apologize. Willow had to learn that she didn't have the right to blithely play with other people's lives, even if it was apparently for the greater good. Or to put her girlfriend into a deeper sleep so she could sneak out in the middle of the night.

"But--they're evil," Willow said, the barest edges of a pout entering into her voice. "We could make them less evil. And they'd stop hurting people. That's not wrong, is it? To want people to stop getting hurt?"

"No," Tara whispered, "it's not. But not if it means hurting other people to do it."

"They're not people, they're monsters!"

"Spike isn't people? Mr. Giles isn't people?"

Willow bit her lower lip. "That's not what I mean . . ."

"And what would you have to do to make sure your magic worked? Would you have to test it on these non-people? Is it ok to run experiments on sentient creatures if you call them monsters? If you tell yourself that it's OK, they're not really like us anyway so it doesn't matter?" Tara watched Willow's hand creep up towards the Star of David she still wore, then drop back down into her lap and clench.

"Why are you being so mean?" Willow whispered.

"Oh, sweetheart . . ." Tara was out of words, so she put down Miss Kitty, went over, cupped Willow's face in her hands, and kissed her. "I love you, I really, really do." Willow's face brightened, and she took a breath to speak, but Tara put a finger on her lips. She moved away, took her jacket off the hook by the door, and took herself away for a while.

****

The Summers house on Revello Drive looked bright and welcoming. Xander sat in his car and wished like hell he had a good reason to skip this.

Buffy had left a message on his machine during the day, a cheerful, relaxed "Hi!" asking him to come over that night to catch her up on what had happened over the weekend. He'd waited till after dinner to call her back; he didn't want to ruin a meal with the story. He took a deep breath, then got out of the car.

Dawn greeted him at the door, sunburned and bouncing. "Xander's here!"

"Hello, Xander," Joyce called from the kitchen.

"Hi, Mrs. Summers! How was the trip?"

"Oh, it was lovely." She came out, and Xander managed not to do more than blink hard a couple of times when he saw she wasn't limping. "The massage therapists were wonderful, and the swimming pool was so relaxing."

Thunderous footsteps on the stairs announced Buffy. "Hey, Xander!" She slingshotted around the newel post, and he oofed when she hit him with a rib-squishing hug.

When he got his breath back, he hugged her back, not worrying about his own strength in his pleasure at seeing everyone so happy. "Hey, Buffy."

She oofed herself and grinned at him. "Someone's been eating his Wheaties. So, was your weekend as fun as ours?"

He let the smile ease. "Probably safe to say No to that."

She studied him, her own smile losing strength.

Joyce tapped Dawn's shoulder. "We need to get your clothes in the wash and see what else you need for school."

Dawn abandoned interest in Xander. "Oh, yes, I want to wear my new skirt first day!" She bolted for the stairs.

Joyce went to Xander and put a hand on his shoulder. "Are you all right, dear?"

He hesitated, then hugged her briefly. "Yeah, I'm good."

She patted his shoulder and stepped away. "I'll keep Dawn out of your way."

Buffy nodded. "Thanks, Mom." She waited till Joyce was out of earshot. "Willow, Tara?"

"Not involved, they're fine."

She swallowed. "Angel? His folks?"

"Fine last I saw them."

"Is someone dead?"

He nodded slowly. "Drusilla." Buffy gasped. "And a whole lot of Watchers."

"Let's go for a walk," she said faintly. "And you can tell me everything."

They ended up in a park. Nothing had leaped out of the darkness at them. Perhaps the entire hellmarked town was still in shock after the weekend. Buffy dropped onto a picnic table bench and stared at nothing.

"All of them," she finally repeated.

"Except for Travers, yeah," Xander said. He hopped up onto the picnic table next to her.

"They waited till I was out of town."

"Yeah. Wes said they probably wanted to spare you."

"A lot of good that did them!"

"Buff, would you really have wanted to be in that fight?"

She said nothing, but her eyes showed agony. She blinked after a moment. "You warned them."

Xander forced himself not to fidget. "I owed Spike. He backed me up at the convent, I returned the favor."

"And Angel got you out of there."

He might have known she'd fixate on Dead Boy. "Yeah."

She shook her head. "He didn't stay to help."

Xander couldn't help the bitter smile. "I think the problem is he wasn't sure which side to help."

Buffy glared at him. "He's got a soul, he wouldn't have been fighting the Watchers."

"They'd just killed Drusilla, Buffy. He went a little nuts about it."

"But he tried to kill her himself."

"Well, as I got it from the man himself, that was his right. Not somebody else's."

She shook her head again, frowning. "That's--deeply weird."

"So's Dead Boy. I was there, Buff, your knight in brooding armor was not playing the hit parade of sanity that night."

"I should call him."

Xander blinked. "What, a condolence call? Your deepest sympathies for the loss of one of his children?"

"No! God, Xander." She stared at him for a moment, then shook herself. "No, god, it's wonderful that Drusilla's gone. Weird, but wonderful." She thought a moment. "Spike must have gone nuts."

"Yes, he did," was all Xander could bring himself to say. The grieving vampire on his balcony was none of the Slayer's business. "Probably ought to call Travers, too."

"Yeah." Buffy got to her feet and began pacing. "I want to apologize for not helping, but he waited till I was gone. But I can't tell him how stupid he was to go in like that, not now."

Xander sighed. "Yeah, I think he probably has come to that conclusion on his own by now."

She gave a deep sigh of her own. "I should patrol. Classes start tomorrow, and I need to get a feel for the town. Things must be pretty shaken up." She managed a smile as she looked at Xander. "I'm glad you're all right, Xander, but you shouldn't have been there."

He shrugged. "It is as it is." He slid off the picnic table. "I need to get to bed myself. Got work tomorrow."

"OK. Need an escort home?"

"No, just need to get back to my car at your place, it's not far." And he had a feeling that his weird nighttime immunity was still good. Another thing she didn't need to know about. "Good night."

For a moment he had all Buffy's attention as she smiled at him, but her attention quickly went back to the night. "Night, Xander."


	2. Chapter 2

Buffy waited till Xander was out of earshot before letting her attention completely go. Part of her hated him for wrecking her happy post-spa-weekend mood, but she knew it wasn't his fault. Blaming Travers, though, after what had happened . . .

Death was what she dealt in, but human death still rocked her. Especially the death of--would the Watchers be considered her colleagues? "What were you thinking?" kept going through her head, but she knew what they were thinking. They could not let Giles survive. The Slayer mind agreed. The Buffy mind was still torn.

She'd spent too much time with vampires to ever dismiss them again as merely soulless monsters. They were people with a broader definition. And the Giles who wore fangs was still very much the man who had trained her and protected her.

She slumped further on the bench and shook her head. A frontal assault on Spike and Giles' stronghold was stupid, even if Xander hadn't warned them. It reminded her of that poem she'd heard in some English class somewhere, Charge of the Light Brights or something.

Part of her mind paused, waiting for Giles' outraged correction of her horrible lack of knowledge etc., accompanied with accurate recitation of the poem in question. The rest of her ached with the once-again realization of how that Giles was dead and gone. Or not. She could see the current him taking the time to scold her ignorance.

She wrapped her arms around herself and rocked a bit. He was there and he wasn't there. She knew why Travers and the others had done what they did. This couldn't go on, Giles the vampire was a mockery of Giles the man, even if you could look at him and still see easily-distracted book guy. Because book guy didn't have any problem with becoming killer guy, and she knew he was out there killing.

"Looks like it's going to have to be me doing the dirty work again," she whispered, feeling a hot tear run down her cheek.

She wiped her face roughly. Not-so-stealthy footsteps in the nearby brush told her that something was about to try its luck. She waited a few more moments, then turned to look at the vampire who had just stepped through the hedge. He had his hands up in the classic "about to pounce" gesture, and the dumbfounded expression looked ridiculous with fangs.

"Hi, there," she said, not moving from her spot on the picnic bench.

"Uh . . . what?"

It was too much effort at the moment to pull the stake out of her inside jacket pocket. "So, are you part of Spike's group?"

"Huh?"

Buffy sighed. "Spike? Leather coat? Blond hair? Talks like a PBS movie?"

The vampire looked at his hands and pulled them down quickly. "Yeah, Spike, I know him. What about him?"

"You know what happened this weekend?"

"Uh, yeah. Big messy fight. Some chick got dusted, Spike and his buddy went nuts, did a massacre on some vampire hunters."

Which was pretty much what Xander had said. Buffy wondered briefly how he knew so much about what happened in the fight if Angel had gotten him out of there before the real bloodbath started.

"Who are you?" the vampire asked.

"I'm the Slayer." The vampire actually jumped back a step in horror. That never got old. She looked at him thoughtfully. "Do you know about that other bunch of vampires, up on Crawford Street?"

"Yeah. Stuck up, they think they're better than us." He frowned. "Aren't I supposed to be fighting you?"

Buffy smiled and pulled out her stake. "You can if you want."

The vampire put his hands up again and tensed. Buffy braced her feet on the ground and got ready to jump across the table in the opposite direction of his leap. He paused, then spun and jumped back through the hedge and ran away.

She thought about chasing him, but her heart wasn't in it tonight. She would patrol, just in case, but she was thinking that she ought to start pulling together information of her own, instead of depending on everyone else to find it for her. And scuzzy as the place was, there was no place like Willy's for demonic gossip.

The afternoon lull had fallen on the gallery, and Joyce took the opportunity to do some dusting. While her customer traffic wasn't high, it was surprisingly steady, with accompanying dirt trailing in with the people. She had a few locals who came in regularly, but she wondered how many of the apparent tourists were not actually human Was there a non-human California sightseeing trail, with Sunnydale and its Hellmouth in the guide book as one of the things one should stop to see? She straightened her display of art prints and postcards and imagined other stores in town with brochures to more esoteric points of interest. Maybe there was even a demonic Chamber of Commerce. Anya would know. She probably had those brochures in the Magic Box.

Joyce remembered the demons she'd met at the Convent of St. Eugene, and she imagined a carload of them on vacation, with little Baynar whistling "Are we there yet?" at his long-suffering parents from the backseat. Her chuckle made the man in the far corner of the shop glance up from his study of some Buddhist carvings from India, and Joyce went back to the counter to hide her blushes.

The bell on the door rang as Anya came in. "Hello, Joyce. You said you had an idea for us to make money together?"

Joyce laughed. She did enjoy Anya's simplicity. "Yes, I did. Could you come take a look at some things I just acquired?" She gestured to some boxes behind the counter. "Apparently some of the things I pick up have magical attributes, and I don't think I should have those sorts of things here. I was wondering if I could place them in the Magic Box as a consignment item."

"Why not keep them here? Lots of demons collect art, and some of them like human art as well."

"I wouldn't know what to do if anything started acting--oddly. And my assistant wouldn't really be able to cope with customers who are odder than most."

Anya shrugged and nodded. "That's true. Some of the most non-human demons really like human art. I guess it's exotic to them." She looked into the boxes. "I don't see anything overtly magical, but there are a couple of these Yoruban figurines that have some interesting symbols. We could set up a section in the Magic Box to put the more artsy things, call it an annex of your gallery, add a couple of zeros to the prices."

She looked confused when Joyce laughed. "Never mind, dear. So nothing in this shipment has the same kind of aura as the spirit bowls over there?"

"Let me make sure."

She turned partly away, then Joyce saw that her face had changed from her normal pretty one to the heavier, vein-laced demonic look. Joyce debated telling Anya that she didn't mind the other face, but if Anya didn't want to make a point of it, she wasn't going to force the issue.

Anya frowned. "There is something else here, other than those bowls." She stared at the new shipment box, then looked around the shop. The customer who was still in the shop had gone to the farthest corner and was staring intently into a coffee table book of the works of Calder. "Him. Something about him."

Joyce studied the man. He gave off an air of shabbiness despite his new clothes. His hands looked old, thin and gnarled, but his hair was still mostly brown. The more she looked, the more he seemed to be trying to hide from her. She looked at Anya, who was watching the man very carefully, and felt that she had sufficient otherworldly backup for a confrontation. "Excuse me, sir?"

He pretended to be startled and looked over his shoulder, but he didn't turn completely. "Yes?"

His voice was British, but a bit scratchy, the way a voice got when someone had a cold and had been coughing a great deal. But it sounded familiar, as well. Joyce moved out from behind the counter, watching him. He turned his face away, then sagged a bit before turning to face her. She stared at him, looking for similarities between the thin, lined face and anything in her memory. She wondered if her recent sickness was the cause for her confusion or something else. "Have we met?"

The man sighed, then smiled slightly. "Yes, Mrs. Summers, we have."

She remembered the smile. The night of the band candy was blurry, but there was a lot she remembered from that night. She gasped and stepped back.

Anya came around quickly. "Joyce, what's wrong?"

"You," she whispered.

He held up his hands. "Please, I'm not here to cause any problems."

Anya raised a hand and glared at the man. "Who is he, Joyce?"

She finally caught her breath. "Ethan Rayne."


	3. Chapter 3 incorporating Chapter 2

The afternoon lull had fallen on the gallery, and Joyce took the opportunity to do some dusting. While her customer traffic wasn't high, it was surprisingly steady, with accompanying dirt trailing in with the people. She had a few locals who came in regularly, but she wondered how many of the apparent tourists were not actually human Was there a non-human California sightseeing trail, with Sunnydale and its Hellmouth in the guide book as one of the things one should stop to see? She straightened her display of art prints and postcards and imagined other stores in town with brochures to more esoteric points of interest. Maybe there was even a demonic Chamber of Commerce. Anya would know. She probably had those brochures in the Magic Box.

Joyce remembered the demons she'd met at the Convent of St. Eugene, and she imagined a carload of them on vacation, with little Baynar whistling "Are we there yet?" at his long-suffering parents from the backseat. Her chuckle made the man in the far corner of the shop glance up from his study of some Buddhist carvings from India, and Joyce went back to the counter to hide her blushes.

The bell on the door rang as Anya came in. "Hello, Joyce. You said you had an idea for us to make money together?"

Joyce laughed. She did enjoy Anya's simplicity. "Yes, I did. Could you come take a look at some things I just acquired?" She gestured to some boxes behind the counter. "Apparently some of the things I pick up have magical attributes, and I don't think I should have those sorts of things here. I was wondering if I could place them in the Magic Box as a consignment item."

"Why not keep them here? Lots of demons collect art, and some of them like human art as well."

"I wouldn't know what to do if anything started acting-oddly. And my assistant wouldn't really be able to cope with customers who are odder than most."

Anya shrugged and nodded. "That's true. Some of the most non-human demons really like human art. I guess it's exotic to them." She looked into the boxes. "I don't see anything overtly magical, but there are a couple of these Yoruban figurines that have some interesting symbols. We could set up a section in the Magic Box to put the more artsy things, call it an annex of your gallery, add a couple of zeros to the prices."

She looked confused when Joyce laughed. "Never mind, dear. So nothing in this shipment has the same kind of aura as the spirit bowls over there?"

"Let me make sure."

She turned partly away, then Joyce saw that her face had changed from her normal pretty one to the heavier, vein-laced demonic look. Joyce debated telling Anya that she didn't mind the other face, but if Anya didn't want to make a point of it, she wasn't going to force the issue.

Anya frowned. "There is something else here, other than those bowls." She stared at the new shipment box, then looked around the shop. The customer who was still in the shop had gone to the farthest corner and was staring intently into a coffee table book of the works of Calder. "Him. Something about him."

Joyce studied the man. He gave off an air of shabbiness despite his new clothes. His hands looked old, thin and gnarled, but his hair was still mostly brown. The more she looked, the more he seemed to be trying to hide from her. She looked at Anya, who was watching the man very carefully, and felt that she had sufficient otherworldly backup for a confrontation. "Excuse me, sir?"

He pretended to be startled and looked over his shoulder, but he didn't turn completely. "Yes?"

His voice was British, but a bit scratchy, the way a voice got when someone had a cold and had been coughing a great deal. But it sounded familiar, as well. Joyce moved out from behind the counter, watching him. He turned his face away, then sagged a bit before turning to face her. She stared at him, looking for similarities between the thin, lined face and anything in her memory. She wondered if her recent sickness was the cause for her confusion or something else. "Have we met?"

The man sighed, then smiled slightly. "Yes, Mrs. Summers, we have."

She remembered the smile. The night of the band candy was blurry, but there was a lot she remembered from that night. She gasped and stepped back.

Anya came around quickly. "Joyce, what's wrong?"

"You," she whispered.

He held up his hands. "Please, I'm not here to cause any problems."

Anya raised a hand and glared at the man. "Who is he, Joyce?"

She finally caught her breath. "Ethan Rayne."

Anya's demon face came back into view. "I've heard of him. He causes trouble."

Rayne had been staring at her, but he shook himself. "Not this time. I'm-looking for someone."

"You're looking for Rupert Giles," Joyce said.

The old glint appeared momentarily, and the smile had edges before it faded. "Yes, I am."

"Why?" Anya said. "Looking to join up with him?"

Rayne managed something of his previous swagger. "Well, that would depend on what he's up to, I imagine. He's not at his old digs, and I haven't seen him at the store. Do you know where I can find him?"

Joyce looked at Anya, who frowned. "I don't think helping a chaos mage reunite with his old partner who's now a vampire would be a good idea," Anya said.

Rayne froze. "Vampire?" he whispered.

He swayed a little, and Joyce grabbed his arm. He felt very frail under her hands. "Anya, go put up the back in 30 minutes sign."

"But your customers-"

"Anya!" Joyce waited till she saw she was being obeyed, then helped Rayne back to the workroom and into a chair. He sat mostly under his own power, trembling. "Can I get you something? Tea? Coffee? I may have some brandy around."

He looked up in apparent surprise. "You're offering me hospitality? After what I've done?"

Behind her, Anya entered the workroom and gasped at Rayne's words. Joyce blinked at her, then looked back at Rayne. "Yes, of course I am."

He quirked another smile, then pressed his hands together as if in prayer. "I would be very grateful for some of that brandy you mentioned." He raised the tips of his fingers to his lips, then to his forehead.

Joyce went to the cupboard above the worktable to get the bottle of brandy. Her puzzled look to Anya brought her over. "Why is it so odd that I'd offer him something?" she asked softly.

"You invoked the laws of hospitality," Anya told her. "What he did indicates that he accepts the laws and will abide by them. If we don't hold to them, very bad things could happen."

Joyce frowned a moment, then nodded. "No harm will come to him while he's under my roof, and he will cause no harm so long as he's under my roof."

"How did you know?"

"Sociology classes, many tribes still use the laws of hospitality."

"Well, between mages and demons and such, those laws are more than just courtesy. Very old powers are involved with them, and no one risks crossing them. If something threatens him here, you're bound to protect him."

Joyce winced. "Then maybe I shouldn't call Buffy just yet."

"Maybe not just yet."

They got glasses and took the brandy back to Rayne. When they all had something to drink, Joyce held hers up. "To hospitality."

Anya held hers up as well. "Yes, to hospitality."

A faint chuckle escaped as Rayne waved his in their general direction. "Indeed." They clinked their glasses against his. "And all its ramifications." He drank half the brandy, and his smiled faded. "Rupert's a vampire?"

Joyce pulled over a stool. "Yes, I'm afraid he is."

"How horrible has he been?"

Anya and Joyce looked at each other. "He hasn't seemed to be horrible at all," Anya said. "The town's not ankle-deep in blood, if that's what you're asking."

"You'd hardly know anything's different," Joyce added. "Except there is that look in the back of his eyes that makes you wonder just what he's thinking."

Rayne shuddered. "Yes, I know that look."

She hesitated, then put a hand on his arm. "I think you need to speak to my daughter."

"Oh, I'd really rather not."

"Buffy knows a great deal more about what's going on than I do." Joyce took a deep breath. "And I'd be sure to tell her about the law of hospitality."

Rayne glanced around. "No offense, Mrs. Summers, but I am not meeting with your daughter the Slayer here. There are far too few exits for my taste."

"There are neutral areas," Anya said. "You always need somewhere to meet where it's not going to end up with body parts all over the floor."

"I'm always in favor of that," Rayne said solemnly.

Joyce frowned. "Buffy's mentioned some place called Willy's?"

"Oh, that's not neutral," Anya said. "That's just convenient. I don't think Buffy knows about this one. She doesn't go to the library that much."

* * *

Xander pulled up in front of the library, but paused before turning off his car's engine. "Did we know that the Sunnydale Public Library was a center of demonic activity before now?"

Buffy peered out of the passenger side window at the impressive Gothic structure. "I'm trying to remember if I knew Sunnydale had a public library."

In the backseat, Willow, next to Tara, bounced. "Oh, it's a wonderful library! I spent lots of time here as a kid. Miss Wiznizki let me into the grown-up section *months* before I was allowed to be. She'd make me tea on slow afternoons and we talked about stuff."

Xander grinned at Buffy. "I tried to tell her that Miss Wiz was a witch and was just going to lure her to some oven in the back, but she never believed me."

Buffy grinned back. "Miss Wiz?"

"Hey, I was eight, Wiznizki is hard enough now."

"Who's the librarian now?" Tara asked.

"Oh, it's still Miss Wiznizki," Willow said, then she frowned. "But she was a little white-haired old lady back when we were kids. And my mom said she was librarian when Mom was a kid."

They all looked at each other. Buffy frowned. "I'm thinking her still being the librarian may not be just because she's got a rotten retirement plan."

Xander shrugged and sighed. "Not like there aren't demons everywhere else. And there would need to be some way to enforce it being neutral."

Willow leaned over the back of the seat. "Buffy, are we really going to trust Ethan Rayne? I don't think he's going to keep his word, he's a chaosmage."

Tara cleared her throat. "The laws of neutrality and hospitality aren't something people play around with. No one would violate them without expecting serious consequences."

Buffy turned to her. "But Anya said the hospitality thing only applied to Mom's shop." She shook her head. "Mom has got to stop offering tea and hot chocolate to everybody that crosses her path."

"No," Tara said, "she should keep doing it. Just the offer proves she's willing to abide by the old laws."

Willow frowned. "But it only counts if they accept the offer."

Xander nodded. "So stay far away from the ones who don't accept."

"Yes," Tara said. "I bet Joyce has had more demons and night folk in her store than she realizes, especially if it's known she keeps the traditional courtesies."

"But I don't want Mom dealing with demons!" Buffy protested.

Xander laughed. "So when will you be moving out of Sunnydale, then?"

Buffy sighed and nodded. She looked towards the library. "Anya said Ethan would meet us inside. Do we trust him?"

"No," Xander and Willow said together. Tara looked undecided.

Buffy grimaced. "OK, do we go in ready for him to make the first wrong move, then?"

After some muttering, the others said yes.

"Then we go."

The setting sun threw amazing shadows off of the crags and crennelations of the library. Gargoyles sat at each corner, and Buffy watched them carefully to make sure they didn't move. "This is going to turn out to be one of those things like Dracula's castle,"she complained, "where this place has apparently been here forever and I had no idea until weird things start happening in it." She risked a look at Xander and winced at the look on his face. "Sorry for, you know, mentioning that."

"No, no," he said tightly, "why would I object to reminders of my days as a bug-eating minion of evil?"

Willow went over to hug his arm as they walked up the front walk. "Do you remember climbing into the space behind the books in the reference section here and falling asleep on each other?"

Xander relaxed and grinned. "I remember Miss Wiznizki pulling out that encyclopedia and peering in at us and saying, 'I don't think you're supposed to be shelved under this number, dears.'"

Buffy grinned at the two of them, then looked at Tara to share a "They're so cute when they're reminiscing" smile. The sad frown on Tara's face stopped her. "What's wrong?" she asked, moving closer so that Willow and Xander wouldn't hear.

Tara blinked and ducked her head. "Nothing. I just don't see them together much anymore."

"Yeah." Buffy looked back to enjoy watching tall Xander leaning down to laugh with Willow.

The doors were two giant slabs of something grey and old, with small, heavily leaded windows. Metal bands ran over the surface, but there weren't any of the snarling faces Buffy had been expecting.

Xander ran his fingers along the grain. "Cedar. Very old, I think these doors are one plank wide. Cedars don't normally get that big."

Tara looked at the carvings around the arched doorway. "Has this always been a library?"

"I think so," Willow said. She touched a bit of scrollwork that made up the doorhandle, then yanked her hand back and stuck her finger in her mouth. "Ow, poky bit."

Xander took the handle and pulled the door open. "Things get dinged as they get used. Allow my calluses to protect you, my ladies."

Buffy took a deep breath when she walked in. "I like the way libraries smell." Xander sneezed. "Bless you."

Willow's forehead crinkled. "That wonderful smell is the smell of books deteriorating. Poor books."

Tara kept walking slowly, her head tipped back so she could stare at the ceiling. "It's the most beautiful room I've ever been in."

Buffy looked up. "Ooh, pretty."

The big main room went up two stories, and the ceiling had stone tracery like in the pictures of old cathedrals. Between the lines of stone, the flat sections were painted dark blue, with small golden stars. Stone pillars held up the balcony that made up the second floor, and the pillars were carved with leaves and vines. A long wooden desk ran down the middle of the room, with the librarians in the middle.

Buffy leaned towards Willow. "Where is this Miss Wiz?" she whispered.

"Down at the far end, with the little kids."

All Buffy could see at the moment was a head of curly white hair with a crowd of half a dozen kids clustered at the counter. She looked around carefully, trying to spot Ethan Rayne, as well as any other strange patrons. There were dark corners back underneath the balcony, sheltered by the book shelves, and some of the moving shapes in those shadows didn't look quite human. Under the book smell she caught the spicy mustiness that she associated with demons, but she didn't hear anything wrong.

At the opposite end of the library from the kids' section was a group of chairs and tables and magazine racks. More than one of the readers was holding the material high enough to hide their faces. A copy of the New York Times lowered just far enough for Buffy to see familiar eyes. Tara gasped quietly and looked in that direction. Ethan Rayne's eyebrows went up a bit, then he slowly folded the paper.

"That bad?" Buffy whispered to Tara. Willow came over to take her girlfriend's arm and look concerned.

Tara shook her head. "Not . . . bad, really. But-not good. Just-churning and twisting and . . ."

Xander nodded. "Chaos."

Rayne got up from his chair and strolled towards a corner behind him, where some study rooms were located. Buffy led the others after him. When they got there, Rayne was waiting by a study room door. "Miss Summers," he said, with a slight nod.

"Mr. Rayne," she sneered. "Stay away from my mother."

"It is my second fondest wish that after tonight I will never set eye on Sunnydale again."

Xander frowned. "What's your fondest wish, not that I'm really eager to know."

Ethan looked at him, glanced at his neck, and frowned. "My fondest wish is to get out of this town before Rupert knows I'm here."

They took the conversation into the study room. Ethan took the chair nearest the door that let him have a wall at his back, and Buffy sat down across the table from him. Willow and Tara stood close together behind her, and Xander took up position in a corner with a view of everyone. Ethan raised an eyebrow at Buffy, looking very close to his usual conniving self.

"Why did you come here if you didn't want Giles to see you?" Buffy asked.

Ethan snorted. "Well, it's not like I knew he was a-a vampire." He looked away a moment.

"Were you going to get revenge for Giles turning you over to the Initiative?" Willow asked.

"I was planning to have . . . words with him on that," Ethan said, not looking at any of them. "He'd always had a bit of a warped sense of humor, but sending me off with those people seemed a bit-harsh."

Buffy saw scars on the side of his neck and running up into his hair. His hands looked as gnarled as her grandpa's hands, and he had been 84 when she last saw him. "Did they hurt you?" He met her eyes, and he looked like he wanted to laugh at her, but the pain in him wouldn't let him. She cleared her throat and looked down.

"How did you get away?" Tara asked softly.

Ethan's face changed completely when he looked at her. The faint smile he managed actually looked friendly. "According to conversations I overheard, someone in Washington decided that a godly nation shouldn't be trafficking in demonic things. I'm not sure if it was someone who was afraid for his soul or someone who simply refused to believe in demons and magic. In short, the Initiative had its budget terminated, and all its specimens had to be . . . disposed of."

Willow gasped. "They let the demons and vampires go?"

Ethan took a slow breath. "No." He clasped his hands together, but not before Buffy saw his fingers shake.

"So, did you escape," Xander asked from his corner, "or did they get squeamish when it came to someone more obviously human?"

"Xander," Willow scolded.

Ethan gave Xander a knowing look. "My fate was still being debated when one of my less moronic guards made a point of unlocking my cell and commenting loudly that the nearest doors to outside would be unsecured for the next half hour and a truck was bound to have had the keys left in the ignition by someone stupid. He walked away, and soon after, so did I."

"And you came looking for Giles," Buffy said.

Ethan nodded.

"What were your plans?"

He studied the tabletop. "To smack him in the head. To buy him a drink. To find him still alive." His voice cracked, and he clenched his jaw on more words.

Buffy felt bad for watching him like this, but she couldn't forget that he'd nearly gotten her killed more than once. "I guess we were thinking a worshiper of chaos would be happy that someone who had kicked his butt had gone to the dark side."

He looked at her, and his face was like something she'd seen in her nightmares. "One day, Miss Summers, you may turn around and suddenly discover that someone you've known and-cared about for the greater part of your life has been destroyed."

She kept most of the pain locked down, but some escaped in a gasp. She heard a noise from Xander's corner, but couldn't look around.

The sympathy in Ethan's eyes was cruel. "Or you already have. It isn't only good that grieves."

"Now, you look here-" Willow started.

Tara put a hand on her shoulder. "Willow, don't."

"But-!"

"Sweetie. No."

A lot of the tension went out of Ethan, and he smiled at Tara. "You are too good for the world, bean-uasal."

Tara did not smile back. "I know you've hurt people I care about, Mr. Rayne. I won't let you hurt them again."

He nodded and made a gesture in the air that left faint little sparkles behind. "The power of root and vine and air is not one I challenge, my dear. I can see what you're capable of, and I have no intention of giving you reason to prove it."

Willow frowned between him and Tara. "You can see it?"

He glanced at her quickly, then away. "The power to see auras is a very useful tool in any mage's arsenal."

"Anyway," Buffy interrupted. "What now?"

Ethan almost smiled at her. "Now I would like to leave before the evening progresses much further. Word travels as quickly as vampires in a small town, and I want to be away before certain words reach certain ears."

"You don't want him to know you're here."

He took several slow, shaky breaths. "Eyghon was his idea. We went with it eagerly, but it was Rupert's prompting that set us to summoning demons. More than once I was actually the one who talked him out of some of his more extravagent plans. Young Rupert did have a conscience, but one often had to remind him of it. A grown Rupert, in the fullness of his powers, without a conscience . . ." He met her eyes completely. "It frightens me."

Xander cleared his throat. "*You* were Giles' conscience? The voice of reason?"

Ethan's grin was wolfish. "I *always* know the possible consequences of my plans, for good and ill. Sometimes I choose to do it anyway."

Xander studied him. "Come what may?"

Ethan nodded. "Come what may."

"You ran from Eyghon," Buffy reminded him. "And tried to sic him on me."

"Well, of course, dear girl. When you know the consequences, you can make plans to try and avoid them. But when it doesn't work, I'm not going to whine about it. I'll just see what I can turn to my advantage."

"You'd make a horrible vampire," Buffy said.

"For a given definition of horrible, yes." Dreadful knowledge rode in Ethan's eyes. "So I think it's all for the best if I left as soon as possible."

Buffy looked around the room, seeing if anyone had anything else to say. Xander watched Ethan thoughtfully, but didn't look like he had any strong opinions either way. Willow was studying Tara, frowning as though she couldn't figure something out. Tara gazed back, looking a little sad.

When she turned back to Ethan, he was smirking just a little, but the malicious glee was missing. "Am I free to go, Miss Summers?" he asked with a twist to his smile.

She kept wanting to report the sighting of an old enemy, but she had no one to report to. No one who it would be a good idea to inform, anyway. She hated being on her own on these calls, and the others were dealing with undercurrents of their own. Things were trying to fall apart, and she couldn't figure out what she was supposed to grab to hold it all together.

She threw her hands up. "Yeah, fine, go away, already."

Ethan nodded and nimbly stood to head for the door. Buffy followed, the others trailing behind. Halfway across the library, Ethan paused. "I would like to speak to you privately for a moment, Miss Summers."

Willow and Xander both drew in breaths, obviously about to protest, but Buffy put up a hand to stop them. She studied Ethan for a few moments, then looked at her friends. "This is neutral ground, right?"

"Anya said so," Xander said, watching Ethan.

"Is that enforced or just something people agree to but can violate if they want to?"

Tara cleared her throat cautiously. "There are a lot of spells and wards hanging in the air in here. If someone caused problems, something would happen."

Willow looked around. "How do you know? Did you do a scrying?"

"I can see them. Well, not *see them* see them, but I can feel them. I can always feel magic." Tara gave Ethan an uneasy look.

Ethan smiled almost kindly. "I do apologize for that, my dear. Nature of the beast, I'm afraid."

Willow pouted. "I wish I could do that so easily."

Xander put an arm around her shoulder. "Got to leave something for everybody else, Wills."

Buffy looked at Tara. "So if he tried anything, alarms would go off."

Tara went wide-eyed at being consulted, then nodded. "Lots of alarms."

"OK." She looked at the others. "Brief private chat, guys. We'll be over there, in view." She turned to Ethan, who bowed his head and followed her lead. They stopped near where Ethan was sitting earlier, and Buffy crossed her arms and stared at Ethan. "What?

He looked back towards the others for a moment, then at her. "Your green witch is more powerful than she realizes. The ability to sense magic as easily as she apparently does is rare."

"Tara being powerful is why you dragged me over here?"

"Yes, it is. Because someone as powerful as she should be able to tell what's all over the redhead, her lover."

Buffy dropped her arms. "Willow? What are you talking about?"

"She's practicing dark magic. I had a small scrying spell running when you came in, and it permeates her aura. Black as anything I've ever touched, and more."

"You're lying."

"Something I rarely do, actually," he snapped, "and not over something I care as little about as you and your group. Anyone looking can tell what your Willow has been doing. If Miss Tara is not seeing it, something is interfering with her. I can make an educated guess as to what-or who."

She wanted to protest, but she couldn't quite bring herself to. "How do I know you're not just trying to make trouble, the way you always do?"

He tsked and shook his head. "Because I'm leaving, and hoping to have absolutely no knowledge of you and this place ever again. But as you will. It is of utterly no concern to me what you do to each other." He turned to leave, then paused. "If you'll hear it from an old enemy, though, watch her. She's playing with things that often play back."

He walked away. Buffy followed slowly. When the front doors closed behind him, she went up on tiptoes to look out through the windows. Ethan stood on the sidewalk, looking carefully in all directions, then headed to a fancy black sports car parked at the curb. He waved his hand over the doorhandle, opened the door, made another gesture, then got in. She saw him peer into the back seat before he turned on the engine.

She twitched when someone came up behind her, but it was only Xander, who easily peered over her head out the window. "So he's really just leaving?"

"It looks like. I'm surprised he didn't look under the thing as well, the way he was checking the car out."

"It's have to be a damned tiny demon to hide under a Testarossa."

"Itty bitty baby fear demon, maybe."

Xander laughed briefly as he watched the sports car drive away as sedately as something that shiny and European could. "And there goes him. I hope he makes it out."

Buffy turned to stare at him. "You're hoping for good things for Ethan Rayne?"

He shrugged. "He wants to leave and not bother us ever again. It's a worthy cause."

"True enough." She started to maneuver around him and spotted Willow and Tara near the main desk. Willow had her arm entwined with Tara's and pointing out something in the children's area, talking and gesturing while Tara watched with a fond smile. "Has Willow seemed OK to you?"

He turned to study her with a frown, and her stomach dropped. "Tara asked me the same thing a few days ago. What's wrong with Willow?"

"Tara said something? What?" He hesitated for several seconds, looking towards the two witches. "Xander. Secrets bad, remember?"

His hands twitched, and he shoved them in his pockets. "She sneaks out at night, when she thinks Tara's asleep."

"Oh, god . . . But they look happy." Xander shrugged unhappily. "Did Tara say anything else?"

"She didn't get a chance to, Cordy and the others showed up right then."

The day they'd brought Xander home from the hospital with fang marks. Which really hadn't been too well explained, now that Buffy thought about it.

Too many things going on when she was trying to figure out something else. She'd look in one direction, and a dozen things happen behind her back. She wasn't any closer to figuring out what to do about Giles, and those Aurelians were still hiding out up on Crawford Street.

"Why are you worried about Willow?" Xander asked.

She wasn't going to make accusations on the word of Ethan Rayne alone. But it did sound like she was going to have to talk to Tara pretty soon. "She's been distracted girl a lot, that's all. And she seemed awful antsy around Ethan."

Xander snorted. "Most rational creatures would be antsy around that guy. What screws aren't loose are definitely missing." He put an arm around her shoulders, and she leaned against him gratefully. "You want to go meet Miss Wiz?"

"Ooo, demon librarians, what fun." She shrugged. "Sure, add another one to the collection."

"She's nice, she smells like cookies."

"That she bakes in her oven in the back, out of bad little kids?"

"Don't you ever dare tell her I said that."


	4. Chapter 4

It was a night for brownies. Joyce had been a nervous wreck until Buffy had called after her meeting at the library to report that all was well. With the relief had come a desire for chocolate. No one else was in the house, or she knew Dawn, at least, would be hovering over the cooling rack practicing her geometry by laying out the most advantageous cuts for pieces per person. Instead, Joyce sat at the table, hovering over the cooling rack, picking crunchy bits off the edges.

Was she as diminished as Ethan Rayne seemed to be? He'd been quicksilver menace and cunning while supervising the band candy incident. He should have seemed slimy and conniving, like Weasely Wally from her middle school, who liked to lurk around the girls' locker room after gym class, but Joyce's admittedly addled brain at the time had paid more attention to the nimble way his hands moved and the twisted humor of his smile.

Seeing that same man scared and scarred had been more disturbing than Joyce imagined it could be. It was such a grim reminder of the way life took its toll. She still limped slightly. She may never be as nimble again herself as she was when following the punk version of Rupert Giles through the streets of Sunnydale. Her teenage years were nothing she wanted to relive while she was thinking rationally, but the remembered thrill of that night still made her smile very privately.

She got up and took the dirty brownie-making dishes to the sink to rinse them out before putting them in the dishwasher. Dawn and Buffy would be home soon. It was a school day tomorrow, and there were lunches to be made and activity forms to sign and responsible mom things to do.

The knock on the kitchen door made her jump and drop the mixing spoon on the floor.

Knowing better than to just open the door, she peeked through the curtain. Oh, speak of one of the devils.

She took a deep breath and opened the door. "Hello, Rupert."

Rupert Giles stayed at the far edge of the back porch and smiled. "Good evening, Joyce."

She pressed her foot against the doorsill to remind herself where the boundary was. "Well. Um. Forgive me for not inviting you in for coffee."

His smile went from distantly courteous to amused acknowledgement. "That's quite all right, I didn't come by for a long visit."

Joyce managed to smile as politely as she could while managing not to show she was nervous about having him here. "What can I do for you?"

He looked away for a moment and frowned. "I was-going over some things this evening, and I remembered a promise I made you six months ago. I try to keep my promises."

She frowned herself. "Six months ago?" Back in the spring time, when they were all worried about Glory, just after her attack. Those long, frightening days and nights in the hospital, wondering if her life was going to end like her great-uncle's, trapped in a bed, a prisoner in her own body. Her memories were cloudy, but she remembered the weakness, seeing the children gathered uncomfortably around her bed, Dawn always inches away from tears and Buffy pulled in so tight around herself, her family collapsing around her while her damned duty did its best to crush her as well. And other visitors, deep in the night, poor Spike looking like a scared young man instead of a century-old monster, whispering to her in a voice filled with education instead of bravado. And someone else as well, when she was feeling particularly helpless but had just seen a possible escape. "Oh. That promise."

Giles nodded gravely. "Yes. I said I'd come back in six months and see if you still wanted to ask me for a particular favor."

Joyce wanted to be horrified at her six-months-ago self for even entertaining the idea of asking to die, especially when she was all but fully recuperated now, but the dread and helplessness were still too clear in her memory. The girls would have been so devastated, even if they were free of that burden. That was guilt to be mulled over in the luxury of her relative good health.

"Thank you for not taking me up on it," she said softly.

"You're quite welcome."

He sounded so much like his old self that she nearly forgot and invited him in. Nearly. He looked a great deal less civilized than he had last spring. He didn't seem to be making as much of an effort to downplay the changes. His hair was shaggier, and there seemed to be bruises fading on his face. His attention kept drifting away from Joyce, and whatever was on his mind was apparently disturbing. The problems of vampires were definitely not her business, but . . .

"Are you all right?"

He blinked and stared at her, honestly startled. "No," he said after a moment. "But it's nothing that should come anywhere near you."

"Will it come near Buffy?" She gasped at the pain on his face.

He took a deep breath, and the disturbing, otherworldly remoteness of a vampire was replaced by the resolution of the man. "Not if I can help it."

"Thank you." He looked startled again. "I never said that enough. You took Buffy into all that danger, but you always looked out for her, too. She misses you."

He winced and turned his face away. "And I miss her." A deep breath, and he looked back at her. "Good-bye, Joyce. I hope not to have reason to see you again."

Joyce winced herself, then nodded. "Good-bye, Rupert."

He looked at her a moment longer, then disappeared down the porch steps and into the night.

* * *

Rupert Giles walked blindly away from Revello Drive. He passed several people on the sidewalk, but he barely looked at them. Vampires had known for years now that hunting near the Slayer's home was idiocy, and he hadn't had to think long about absorbing that rule. In any case, he had made sure to eat someone before he went to the Summers house. He knew the visit was going to be difficult enough without adding hunger into the mix.

Ever since Drusilla's loss, he'd been obsessed with loss. When he'd first been turned, he'd been dazzled at the idea of the long years ahead of him to fill with experiences and learning. Then Drusilla had arrived, and he had imagined years with her-and, well, with Spike, if he was honest-entwined in the delightful perversions that were vampiric passion. Then she was gone, and he was as bereft as any child whose mother had been ripped away. Ever since, he had been unable to think of little but everything he had lost over his life and death. When his mourning for Drusilla ebbed, the remnants of the man wept for the loss of the sunlight and the friendships of the living man. The memory of the near-loss of Joyce had taken him as well, and he had remembered the promise he'd made her in her hospital room.

That promise was now void, but that came with another loss. Joyce could be nothing but potential prey, now, and such a thought was madness. He held enough of his old intelligence to know that moving on Buffy's family was the quick way to dusty death, and the best way to avoid temptation was to avoid those humans he used to call friends.

He paused in the shadows near the Espresso Pump. Open mike night again, by the sound of it. A flubbed guitar chord made him debate putting tonight's so-called singer out of everyone's misery. He absently flexed his fingers, once again enjoying the feel of joints as nimble as a young man's. His guitar occupied a corner of his room at Sunrise Grove, but he hadn't played it since he was turned. Drusilla had opened the case one night and run her fingernail along the low E string, humming along with the resonance. He should have played for her.

Another bad chord nearly sent him into the coffee shop to rip the player's fingers from his hands and rescue the helpless instrument, but he resisted the urge. Instead he turned and continued his walk.

Tendrils of magic lured him to a quieter part of town, to the chain link fence surrounding the old high school. The street lights on this block had yet to be repaired even after all this time, and the pile of rubble that still filled the site was a tangle of shadows and weeds. The gymnasium wing was mostly standing; the windows were blown out and the walls with their ragged tops were outlined against the lights of the rest of town. His library was a jumbled ruin in the middle of the wreckage. To his new senses, the scent of demon-Mayor blood lingered.

He had to smile at it all. Such a night that had been. There were rumors of rebuilding the place, of bulldozing it all flat, erecting a lovely new building on top, and pretending it had just been a gas leak and that budget issues were why nothing had been done with the site all this time. The current crop of high school students were occupying trailers and crowding the class rooms over at the high school on the other side of town.

Giles wondered if the current city administration knew what lurked underneath the rubble of the old high school. He leaned against the fence, threading his fingers through the holes in the chain link. It had always called to him, the Hellmouth. The darkness had teased a response from the chaos that still lurked in the depths of his soul, but he'd ruled that part of him and resisted any urges that wanted to come out to play. The pull was stronger now, though he was thankfully still master enough of himself to keep from following.

Something rustled behind him, something that moved against the wind. He turned quickly, swearing to himself that he'd let something creep up on him.

A tall young woman, with skin and features that spoke more of Africa than of America, stood there. She held her head easily against the pull of the very long braid that looped around her head and shoulders. Giles drew in a breath and smelled faint blood, and he heard no breath or pulse. She regarded him calmly, studying him in return.

"You are the Watcher," she said, her English accented with French and something more exotic. "They call you Ripper now."

He glanced around, looking for both other vampires and viable escape routes. "Yes, I am. And they do. You are?"

She smiled and let the fangs flow into view. "I am called Fleur du Mal."

He could only blink for a few moments. He'd expected someone-older. Her human face looked around the same age as Buffy when he had first met his Slayer. Her smile, though, was calm and knowing, and her bearing was regal.

He didn't know how to react to her. The residual Watcher was delighted and eager to ask about the inner workings of the Order of Aurelius, about where she had come from and what she had seen. The demon kept urging him to bow his head, to acknowledge the rumored power and obvious age. "Well. Um. Hello?"

The vampire face faded back to extremely lovely human. "You are definitely of Angelus' get. His line is notoriously bad at proper respect."

He frowned. "Shouldn't that be Darla's get?"

Fleur du Mal's smile twisted slightly. "Darla knew her place, however close to the Master that it was. Angelus lured her from the Master's side and laughed at the rest of us while he did so."

The thirst for knowledge broke free. "You knew the Master? That long ago?"

"I was taken to his Court when I was barely turned, and I learned the ways of Aurelius." She turned from Giles to study the wrecked high school. "The Hellmouth. Where our Master died."

"Not my master," he said automatically, then he winced.

She raised an eyebrow at him thoughtfully. "You acknowledge no master?"

The pain took him again, and he closed his eyes. "She's dead."

"Ah." Fleur du Mal was closer when he opened his eyes. "It's very hard, to lose your Sire. Especially for one so young. My own was destroyed a hundred years ago, but I remember my grief."

"Who was your Sire?"

She waved an elegant, dismissing hand. "No one who would have come to the Watchers' notice. His entire existence was service to the Master." She looked back at the school. "One can feel the Hellmouth breathing. Our-" She smiled slightly. "The Master coveted its power." Her gaze slid back to Giles. "And he was destroyed for it."

Again he felt the urge to cringe and to beg forgiveness for his part in the Master's destruction. But that wasn't his strongest impulse. "Yes, he was. I was terribly proud of Buffy that night."

Her chuckle surprised him. "He would have liked you, my Master." She lightly touched Giles' hand. "He prized intelligence and the ones who sought knowledge. Sorcerers were often part of his court, helping him with his research. I remember his library, a wonderful thing."

"He had nothing like that, here. After, well, everything, I went to where he'd been trapped. It was little more than a cave."

"He had other things than comforts on his mind at the time. But his library still exists, writings gathered over millennia. They merely await the hand of the next leader of Aurelius." She smiled and took another step closer. "I don't imagine there's another archive of the history of vampires to compare in the world."

The thought of all that knowledge was nearly erotic. "Most of the vampires I've met have shown little regard for history."

"Most of the vampires you have met are idiots. The rituals and traditions of Aurelius are preserved in writings from the beginning of time. Without them we are only old vampires hiding in a cave."

"A cave? Where?"

She lowered her voice. "A very ancient cave in France. There are paintings of creatures that died when demons still walked openly on the face of the world. And figures of little two-legged beings chasing the creature with spears and fire."

"Lascaux," Giles breathed.

"It is not only the humans who drew their hunts on stone walls. In the deepest parts of the most secret caves, the humans are the hunted. Only the barest light is brought to those chambers, where He Who Keeps tends the records. He was tracing the outlines of the Master's fall at the Hellmouth when I left."

An unbroken record of history going back centuries. Millennia. Giles felt breathless at the idea. "I want to see them."

"As is your right. You are of Aurelius. The lineage and the history are yours. I can take you there."

He was remarkably far into picturing the trip before the wording of her offer became clear. "I somehow doubt that this invitation extends to Spike."

She smiled and said nothing, though her smile acknowledged the point.

He wanted, oh, how he wanted. For the first time he felt he was part of the long tale of vampiric tradition that was the Order of Aurelius. Instead of trying to deduce the history from what fragments had been gleaned by the Watchers, he could go into the archives themselves, read the pages for himself, and learn everything for himself.

At the cost of declaring himself to be on Fleur du Mal's side, not Spike's.

The Watcher was willing to pay the cost. The scholar easily weighed the competing worth of an ancient library versus a foul-mouthed punk. But the demon remembered waking alone and frightened to a new, deadly world and the brutal, understanding comfort of a person who hadn't asked for the job. Then there were the memories of the hours when he and Spike and Drusilla were twined together, he being made a part of their unholy union, followed by kneeling with Spike in the dust of their Sire, surrounded by blood and ash, clutching each other as their loss overwhelmed the fury of battle.

He smiled at Fleur du Mal. "It is a very kind, tempting offer, but I couldn't possibly go without Spike. He has more appreciation for history than you might think, and he has respect for books."

Her smile twisted. "I see no place for William the Bloody in the courts of Aurelius."

"A pity."

Fleur du Mal sighed and shook her head. "It's unnatural, this loyalty you and your line have for each other. But then, all Angelus' get are mad."

Giles couldn't help snarling just a little. "If you ever have need of someone to betray Angelus, you have only to ask."

"Indeed? I will remember that."

She took a step away, and Giles glanced around again. "You're accepting my refusal of your offer so easily?"

"It was a small chance, but worth the taking. This matter won't be settled tonight. But soon."

"Spike has no interest in Aurelius or its politics. You could go home, and he would never bother you."

"He is an irritant. He muddies things."

"He survives things. And destroys things. Dismiss him at your peril."

Fleur du Mal studied him a moment. "You champion him from more than just blood loyalty."

"He has the attention span and impulse control of a toddler on bad drugs, which on occasion is the only thing that has saved this town. He can be very dangerous, if he wishes." He smiled. "Or if I remind him."

She raised her chin, then tilted her head in acknowledgement. "Indeed. For all that you are young, you have your own threat. Which is why I made the offer I did." She nodded once more, then turned. "It would be a pity for the order to lose one as unique as you," she said over her shoulder, "but make no mistake. You and William the Bloody are acceptable loses on my way to my goal."

"We never doubted it. Good evening, Fleur du Mal."

"Good evening, Ripper."

She faded into the darkness, and Giles made another rapid scan of the area before relaxing. He was not yet recovered from the fight with the Watchers, and he suspected Fleur had known she had a fair chance of defeating him if she wished.

No more time for dwelling on the past. Time to go home and force himself and Spike to confront the future.

* * *

Tara finished lighting the candles and the incense, then turned off all the lights in the dorm room, just as the light of the full moon poured in through the open window. "Welcome, Blessed Mother," she whispered with a smile.

Willow was gone again, but Tara had decided not to let her girlfriend's unpredictability distract her from the rituals she loved. The turning of the year was coming, All Hallow's Eve, and tonight was the full moon closest to that date.

She had wanted to do this skyclad, but the realities of dorm life dictated that she be wearing something in case one of her neighbors thought it would be a good time to pull the fire alarm. A few days ago she'd mentioned to Willow that it would be nice to hold the Samhain ritual out in the woods, and Willow had eagerly agreed. But Willow had disappeared after her last class, and, well . . .

Tara opened the window and took a deep breath of the evening. Beyond the chattering people on the lawn outside, beyond the smell of the cars, beyond the streetlights, was the world. She closed her eyes and began to sing.

"Persephone went into darkness The sun slides under the hill The sea draws off from the shoreline The world grows silent and still."

Her mother had taught her the words when she was a child, a song to mark all turnings and changes. Tara had whispered the lines at her mother's funeral, while the rest of the small church had sung about a stern God in his heaven who would damn you to hell if you didn't toe the line. Her father had always given her a pointed look during those hymns.

She knelt on the floor as she sang, holding her arms out to the moonlight. Magic drifted along her skin, turning about as the entire cosmos moved in an eternal spiral. Life flowed around her-Miss Kitty a small presence on the bed, Amy crouched in a corner of her cage with the spirit of a woman flickering amidst the tiny rat power. Outside, young life bounced and sparkled. Darker energy prowled nearby. Tara tried to care about possible danger, but she'd slipped away from her active mind when she had chosen to sail on the moonlight.

The Hellmouth churned, blanketing whole areas of the town in darkness. Spots of merry chaos dotted the area, flashes of red and yellow and, oddly, baby blue. Demons of various sorts. Some of them were violent and evil, others were just . . . other. A flare of fierce white shone in the middle of one gathering of chaos, a collection of yellow that rapidly shrank until the white stood alone. Tara urged a drift of protection towards the flare, and she felt Buffy look around in surprise.

Tara pulled away from consciousness of the active creatures. This was the time of year to pay tribute to the beloved dead. The moon and the calendar were out of sync, but the Wiccan year turned on the moons, and the old year ended tonight. Departed spirits traveled through the fainter realms, and there was one she missed badly-

The dorm room door opened and the lights flicked on. "Hi, honey, I'm home!" Willow called.

Tara gasped in shock, her mind skittering in all directions.

Willow turned off half the lights. "Oh, baby, I'm sorry!" She looked around the room. "What were you doing?"

"I-I was doing the Samhain ritual."

"I thought we were doing that together-was that tonight?"

Tara had to smile. "Yes, it was."

"Oh, I'm sorry!"

She got up off the floor and went to hug Willow. "Where were you?"

Willow bounced a little. "I got an idea in class, then I went to the Magic Box to look some stuff up."

"An idea for what?"

"For turning Amy back."

Tara looked over at the rat cage. Amy was sitting up and apparently paying close attention. "I saw her when I was in the ritual. The rat can hardly hold her."

"Oh, good, I was hoping for that." Willow dropped her bag on the bed and went to crouch down in front of the cage. "She wants to get back, but while she's a rat she doesn't have the means to do it. We just need to show her the way out." She unlatched the cage door, reached in for Amy, then placed her on the bed. "You be good," she said to Miss Kitty, who had come over to sniff. "Amy is not dinner."

"What will we need?" Tara asked, looking over the candles, then checking her box of herbs and simples.

"We shouldn't need anything." Willow knelt at the foot of the bed and put her hands around Amy. "I-I found a portal spell a while ago, and what I found at the Magic Box showed me how to modify it so that it can help someone like Amy. We just need to show her the way and give her an anchor." She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

Tara felt the power building. "Willow, wait-"

"Hecate," Willow whispered, "she called on you before, bring her back to the shape she had before."

Amy the rat began twitching and squeaking, with streams of light circling around her. The light started to take on the shape of a young woman, but the edges remained blurry.

"Ooo, darn it . . . Hecate, we beseech thee, return Amy to the way she was." The squeaks changed, becoming more human.

Tara felt the power around Willow moving, spinning faster. Miss Kitty dove off the bed and disappeared underneath. Papers over on the desks began to rustle in the physical wind.

"Hecate, darn it, let her go!" Willow snapped. "Don't think we can't make you!"

"Willow!" Tara gasped. "You can't just-" Willow reached out and grabbed one of her hands, and Tara went to her knees in shock as her own power was yanked into Willow's magical spiral.

The light around Amy solidified, hiding the rat from view. The cries were completely human.

"Change back!" Willow ordered. "Now!"

Horrified, Tara saw that her eyes had gone black, then the light exploded, knocking her and Willow to the floor.

They lay on the floor gasping for several seconds, then Willow lifted her head. On the bed lay a naked young woman, blinking back.

"I did it," Willow whispered. "I really did it!"

The next few minutes were chaotic. Amy crouched on the bed, darting frightened looks in all directions, cringing at the noises from the hallway and outside. Willow found a robe to drape around her naked shoulders, and it took Amy a few moments to remember to pull it around her. Tara stayed on the floor, her mind still whirling from the amount of power that had been flying around the room.

Willow finally dropped onto the bed next to Amy, grinning at her. "Hi! Welcome back!"

Amy stared at her, blinking. "Wil-Willow?"

"Yes, hi! How are you!"

"I-I was a rat."

"Yes, and now you're not."

Amy raised a slow hand up to her face, then turned her head to study her hand. She flexed her fingers for a few moments, watching them, then her gaze fell on Tara. "Who are you?"

Tara opened her mouth. "This is Tara," Willow answered first, "my roommate."

"Roommate." Amy looked around the room. "Is this-college?"

"Uh huh."

"I missed graduation?" Amy said forlornly.

"Oh, you didn't miss much," Willow shrugged. "Some vampires, some explosions, the mayor turned into a demon-you were safer in the cage."

Tara leaned forward and put a careful hand on Amy's foot. "Hi," she said softly. "How do you feel?"

Amy studied her for a while. "Fuzzy," she said finally.

Willow bounced off the bed to the other side of the room. "Oh, I bet you're dying for a shower. Let me find some stuff."

Amy flexed her foot under Tara's hand. "I think I remember you," she said. "Quiet and green and singing." She frowned and looked over her shoulder. "Was there a cat?"

"Yes, but we never let her bother you."

Amy shuddered. "She looked at me. And she licked her lips."

"Oh, dear."

Willow came back with a basket containing soap and shampoo and some towels. "Here you go. You'll probably feel a whole lot better after a good wash."

Amy reached up to her hair and grimaced. "Oh, yes." Clutching the robe around her, she made her way off the bed, took the basket and towels, then headed for the bathroom.

Willow waited till the bathroom door was closed, then bounced up and down. "I did it! She's back!"

Tara took a deep, shaky breath. "That was so dangerous."

"What? No, it wasn't, if it hadn't worked, she would have just stayed a rat."

"No-no, that's not what I meant. You-you just started summoning power, without any protection. There are things out that feed on the power, and you were pulling so much." She looked around the room nervously, feeling wisps of something that might be lingering power and might be something else. "And then to just make demands . . ."

Willow laughed and leaned down to hug her. "It's OK, baby, nothing bad happened." She laughed again and dashed over to the closet. "She's going to need something to wear." She began flipping through everything. "But she's taller than me, and she's skinnier than I remember."

Tara stared for a few moments, then shook her head. "Where are her old things?"

"I think they're still in her house. Apparently there was some account somewhere that kept paying for it." Willow frowned. "I wonder if her mother set it up, she arranged lots of stuff."

Tara got up and sat on the end of the bed. Miss Kitty cautiously poked her nose out, then joined Tara, who picked up the cat to hug. "I hope there isn't too much trouble getting her back into life. She didn't officially graduate high school, and I bet her driver's license has expired. There will be all sorts of paperwork."

Willow waved her hand. "We can whip up something, say she went to high school somewhere else, create a transcript-Oh, maybe we can get her a scholarship. Or just set up so that it looks like she's already done a couple of years of college so she doesn't have to bother. But first-" She took another look at the closet, then shrugged and snapped her fingers. A small pile of clothes appeared on the bed.

Tara jumped. "Did you grab her clothes from her house?"

"No, those'll be all musty, and they're old, and she needs new stuff. "

Tara stared at Willow in disbelief. "You summoned new clothes? From where? Did you take them from someone's closet? Or from a store?" She looked at the shirt on the top of the pile and found a price tag. "Willow! That's stealing!"

Willow blinked at her in dismay. "We'll go pay for them. Of if Amy doesn't like them, I'll just send them back."

"And get others?"

"Why are you so mad? We got Amy back, that's a good thing. OK, maybe the clothes are a little much." She waved a hand, and the clothes disappeared. "OK?"

Tara hugged Miss Kitty, hiding the tears that wanted to start and trying to find words to make it all clear. "Willow, sweetheart, you can't just take what you want, especially with magic. Everything has a cost. We don't have to magic anything up for Amy, it can be done the usual way."

"But this will be so much faster, and there won't be as much fuss and explanations and all that. Who would it hurt?" She glanced at the spot on the bed where the clothes had been and blushed. "I really was going to pay for the stuff that Amy wanted to keep."

Tara put down the cat, then went to hug Willow. "It's going to hurt you, sweetheart. It's-it's like algebra. Both sides of the equation have to balance. If you take something on one side, you have to give on the other."

Willow smiled and tugged on a strand of Tara's hair. "Chemistry with more newt. You're so sweet to worry. But I'm not doing anything that's draining me, or anything. Though I did feel a little out of breath by the time we got Amy all the way back," she finished with a grin.

Tara tried not to sigh. "It's not just the power you use. It's the why and the how. You just-demanded that the universe do what you wanted, just yanked on the-the strings of creation without worrying about what those strings are tied to. Everything has echoes and consequences."

"Nothing bad happened!"

"Not yet! There are reasons for the circles and the invocations and the rituals, it's to make sure you're only pulling on sources you can trust. There is so much power out there, but a lot of it isn't safe. If you use it, it will you use you back."

Willow stepped back. "Only if I let it."

"Only if you can." Tara wrapped her arms around herself. "There are things out there that are a lot more powerful than you, Willow."

"It's not like I'm-I'm summoning demons or anything."

"Yet," Tara whispered. "You keep grabbing power and doing bigger and bigger things, and it's luring you in . . ." She turned away. "I'm scared for you."

Willow went over to her desk and rummaged around some things. "I-I know it could be dangerous. That's why I'm careful. But I can do the big things. Why don't you want me to try everything I can? I'm not afraid."

"Oh, sweetheart, you should be-" She turned back. Willow was staring at her, a small bundle of herbs in her hand and a terribly sad look on her face. "What is it?"

"I'm sorry," Willow whispered. "Forget." The world faded out.

* * *

"'Another Saturday night, and I ain't got nobody / I got some money 'cause I just got paid.' Or Friday, as the case may be." Xander pulled up in the alley behind Joyce Summer's shop. Buffy had left a voice mail calling for a Scoobie patrol, which told Xander that she was doing her best as well to pretend that she didn't mind having nothing better to do on Date Night.

Joyce's shop had become de facto Scoobie Central. Xander didn't like running into Anya at the Magic Box, and Buffy too often caused consternation among the more demony clientele that the shop now attracted, with a vengeance demon now in charge. She did still use the training room in the back, and Willow often did research, but a fair number of research books had ended up in the back room of the gallery.

He let himself in through the backdoor into the workroom. Dawn sat at the table with her back to the door and her algebra textbook propped up in front of her. She had her cellphone in her lap and was busily texting. Xander saw Joyce out in the gallery section behind the counter. She looked up and waved to him, but she was on the phone as well. He waved back, then crept up behind Dawn, making sure his shadow didn't fall on her. She was texting her buddy Janice, apparently about some boy who was OMG HOTTT!

"I don't remember that equation from algebra. Is that the new math they keep going on about these days?"

Dawn shrieked and flung her phone into the air. He caught it as it reached the top of its arc.

She clutched her chest. "Xander! Geez!"

Joyce peered towards them, one hand over the receiver of the phone. Xander held up the phone and raised an eyebrow. She frowned, then smiled, shrugged, and nodded as she went back to her phone call.

"It's your own fault for sitting with your back to the door," he told Dawn as he presented her with her phone.

Still breathing hard, she looked at the configuration of chairs and doors, then pulled her chair to a position where she could see both her mother and the backdoor. "That was mean," she said as she plopped into her chair.

"Mean survives on the Hellmouth." He went to the mini-fridge to grab a drink, then took a chair and pulled over her algebra book. "Good lord, I remember some of this." He quickly put the book back on the table.

Dawn leaned on the table and fixed him with a serious look. "So tell me the truth. Am I ever going to use algebra?"

"I hate to break it to you, but I actually did something equationish at work yesterday. So, yeah, the teachers are right."

She humphed and crossed her arms.

"Teachers are right about what?" asked Buffy as she came in from the front of the store.

"That algebra is useful sometimes," Xander said.

"Yeah, two vampires times three zombies equals five zombie/vampires. I never did like algebra." She checked her watch. "Sunset in less than an hour. I was thinking we should hit the northern cemeteries, we haven't been through there in a while."

"Just what I look forward to on a Friday night," Xander grinned. He glanced out into the store. "Is Willow coming later?"

Buffy tapped her fingers on the back of the chair near her. "She's helping Amy with readjusting to the world on two feet, she said."

Xander frowned. "She's spending a lot of time with Amy."

"Amy was a rat for, like, forever," Dawn said. "It's got to be weird."

"Yeah, it does," Buffy agreed.

Dawn blinked a couple of times. "She's been a rat longer than I've been around-really around, not, you know. Do you think rat-Amy knew about me like everyone else? Or when she got turned back, did she get the Dawn Summers Memory Update?"

Buffy opened her mouth to answer, then stopped. She frowned, then looked at Xander, who shrugged. "I fell asleep in philosophy class," he said, "but this sounds like one of those I Think, Therefore I Am thingies."

Buffy shrugged in return. "Well, I guess if we see Amy, we can ask. But we should get going, Xander."

Dawn bounced in her chair. "If it's just the two of you, I could-"

"No," Buffy and Xander both said firmly.

"Dawn," Joyce called from in front, "could you come help me with something on the top shelf, please?" Dawn sighed. "Just because I'm the tall one . . ." She put up a finger. "And no 'one in every generation' jokes, please."

Buffy grinned. "Wouldn't dream of it." She led the way out the back door.

Xander gestured to his car. "Are we walking or driving to the cemetery of our choice tonight?" Buffy glanced at her shoes. "Drive, I think." She grinned as Xander held the passenger door for her, but the smile faded into a frown as they drove away.

"What's wrong?" Xander asked.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out something. "What does this look like?"

Xander took the tiny metal tube, then turned on the overhead light at the next stop light. There was a small lens at one end of the tube and a short wire out the other end. "It looks like a tiny little camera, like in the spy movies." He flipped off the cabin light when the signal turned green. "Where did you get it?"

Buffy was frowning harder. "I found it in my bedroom."

He stomped on the brakes and stared at her. "Your bedroom?"

She flapped her hands at the road. "Drive, drive! Don't get in a wreck, it'll do horrible things to your insurance." She shrugged as he gave her a puzzled look. "Mom's been harping about young adult drivers and what they do to insurance. Go, do, drive."

Xander proceeded to drive. "And, he says again, your bedroom?"

She sighed. "I was sitting on my bed, and the light caught something in my bookcase. I went over to look, and this was taped up underneath a shelf, kind of behind a book. I have no idea how long it's been there."

"Do you think there might be others?"

"I don't know. Other than tearing the house apart, I don't know how to find them, especially without letting Mom or Dawn find out. God, what if there are cameras in their bedrooms too?" She looked at the camera. "Shouldn't it be plugged into something, though?"

He waved the wire end. "I think it's one of those wireless thingies. Broadcasting somewhere."

"Euw."

"Did you show it to Willow? She'd know."

"I called her when I found it, but she wasn't really listening to me. She said she'd come over and do a spell to see if there were any others, but she didn't say when." She slumped down a little farther into the seat. "Some of my clothes are missing, too."

Xander glanced at her. "And I'm guessing you didn't find them in Dawn's dresser."

"No. Somebody's been in my house, Xander. In my room."

He shuddered. "And just as creepy as when Angel was paying midnight calls." Buffy made a small noise, and Xander winced. Anytime Deadboy's name came up, she still reacted. She'd tried a couple of times to ask for more information about the Watcher Bloodbath and Angel's part it in, but she'd always bailed on the conversation. Though that might not be just from problems talking about Angel. "So, creeps creeping creepily about your house. I think we're going to need to distract Willow from No-Longer-A-Rat Amy and get her to be computer girl on this. She might be able to find out where this thing was broadcasting to."

Buffy took the camera back. "We may not know where, but I bet we can guess who. The guys with the freeze ray."

Xander nodded. "Weird gadgets and creepy ideas. Yeah, sounds like them." They pulled up a block way from the first cemetery of the night. "We're here, milady. May I interest you in the fine selection of weapons and stakes that occupy my trunk and make me glad there aren't many traffic stops in this town?"

"Sounds like a Friday night of fun."

The vampires were quiet in all the cemeteries they checked, but they did find a couple of fledges just crawling out of their graves in Shady Rest so the night wasn't a complete waste. Xander joined Buffy on a marble bench in front of a mausoleum.

"It's quiet," Xander said solemnly. "Too quiet."

"Jinx," Buffy muttered. "I hate it that the bad guys have somebody smart in charge. Somebody . . ."

He leaned against her. "Somebody who knows how you work."

"Yeah." She let her weight rest against him and dropped her head onto his shoulder. She said something softly, and Xander listened harder. "Dawn's OK, Mom's OK, nobody's dead . . . again . . ." He quietly put his arm around her shoulders and hugged her.

He let himself dream it, for a second, that this was more than Buffy taking a moment's comfort from a friend, that he wasn't still bleeding internally from Anya being alive and well, but out of reach. He hesitated for a moment, then leaned down to kiss the top of her head. He felt her smile, then she turned her head to look at him. She studied him for a few moments, then leaned up to kiss his cheek. With a sigh, she pulled back to sit up straight.

"A Slayer's work is never done," she said.

"Nope," he replied.

She patted his knee, then stood up. "I'm going to take a stroll through campus on my way home. You OK for getting home?"

He kept telling himself that it wasn't as emasculating as it sounded, this tiny blonde girl asking a guy a foot taller than her if he needed help getting home. And really, it was a fair question. "I'm good."

She gave him a real Buffy smile, all that bright attention focused on him. "It is very important to me that you don't get munched, Xander."

He managed a 99% sincere laugh. "I've got a vested interest in that myself."

She nodded firmly. "Good. Call me tomorrow."

"Yes, ma'am."

He watched her till she was out of sight, then reached up to rub the mostly-healed wound in his throat.

When he was little and they were visiting his mother's mom, Grandma had found him sitting way in the far corner of the backyard after dark, underneath a bush and staring out at the fireflies. She hadn't grabbed his arm and yanked him out, just peered in at him and asked if he needed anything. He'd shaken his head and said nothing. She'd smiled and said, "You're a fey little thing, aren't you. Don't stay out too long, there's pie waiting."

Later, over pie, he'd asked what "fey" meant. Grandma had ruffled his hair and said it meant like the fairyfolk in the stories, who hid in the woods and the bushes and did magic. Unfortunately, his father overheard, and the word fairy had only one definition in his very abridged personal dictionary. They hadn't visited Grandma very much after that.

It was the same mood that was on him now. The night was dark and quiet around him, with the occasional bird noise in the trees. He wanted to find a little spot to tuck himself into where he could stare out into the night and see what happened.

Another part, that he acknowledged as little as he could, wanted to run, to sniff the air, to make noises that scared the little things hiding in the bushes.

He tucked his head and smiled to himself, there in the dark. He was supposed to be afraid, he knew. The scar on his throat underlined the personal dangers of the night. When he looked into himself to where the fear should be, all he found was excitement. When he'd first followed Buffy into the darkness to fight the monsters who terrorized his school, there'd been a sensible amount of dread. All gone now.

The responsible guy who got up in the morning to go to work looked carefully for any signs of that suicidalness that had sent him out looking for fangs and claws, but that wasn't there. He very much did not want to run into anything that was likely to kill him. And he very much did not want to go home. There was a paycheck in his bank account and a Friday night all around him. He'd hoped to have some company while he was fiscally frivolous, but prowling around to find what he could on his own had its appeal.

He took his time getting up and heading back to his car, keeping a casual eye on his surroundings and not being too worried about what might be seeing him. When he got to the car, he got out a mini-flashlight and checked the backseat before opening the door, then he bent over just to make sure there wasn't anything underneath. Finding nothing, he got in and drove off.

The very idea of going to the Bronze by himself was creepy. He remembered feeling sorry for the post-graduation people who were hanging around the place when he'd been in high school, and he doubted opinions had changed. Willow and Buffy still went there occasionally, but cute girls were welcome in lots of places that Zeppos were not. Similarly, the Espresso Pump also leaned towards the gown side of the town-and-gown equation-with added negative points for Giles-with-guitar sightings. The Fish Tank was supposed to have an excellent country music selection on the jukebox, but Xander had lost all taste for beer bottles flying through the air a long time ago.

Dear lord, for bars he was willing to set foot into, that left Willy's and the Wheel, that weird place out by the freeway that had theme nights. He'd only gone into that one when he was delivering pizzas, and he tried not to think of the stuff he'd seen out of the corner of his eye while handing over the stack of extra-large cheese onlys. Anya had tried to get him out there for Sub Night, and he'd been willing, until she said it had nothing to do with sandwiches.

The Sun Cinema was showing some lame chick flick. Couples waited in line, the guys looking bored, yet hopeful of getting laid later. The rest of Main Street was depressingly convivial-people on dates, people in laughing groups, people having fun. At the 7-Eleven at the intersection of Main and Miwok, he turned left, towards the train station and the river. The real bad side of town.

On this side of town were the warehouses and factories and canneries that had been built decades ago, when Sunnydale was a bustling commercial center in its own right. Some of the places nearest the river and the trainyard were still in business, trading in produce from the farms and vineyards farther out in the valleys. Back in 5th Grade Social Studies, Mrs. Keener had talked about small growers who wanted to stay independent of the big conglomerates and about the politics of the dock workers and union busters and unexplained fires in warehouses. To most everyone in Sunnydale, this side of town was just something to be talking about in terms of urban renewal and opportunities for development. What they didn't realize was that this stretch of blight and decay was also the gateway to the demon side of town.

At first sight, the neighborhood just looked like any rundown, low-rent district. Xander wondered if it had been built with the monsters in mind-the late, unlamented Mayor had been in charge for a long time-or if they'd moved in as the humans left. A couple of low-rise buildings looked like apartment houses, which made sense, because the thingies had to live somewhere.

Hell, there was a even a new QuickiMart on the corner down from Willie's.

Not as many pedestrians on the street as in the human part of town. Most of them looked human, but a few showed extra appendages or a bit of extra squishiness on the edges. Xander paused at a Stop sign for a pedestrian who had multi-jointed, spindly legs peeking out from under a long coat.

He actually felt calmer in this part of town. Maybe he wasn't fit company for normal humans anymore-or they weren't fit company for him. He knew most of the rules here-if it tries to eat you, it's not your friend, and many things will try to eat you. He thought he knew the rules for normal humans, but those had stopped working for him a long time ago.

There was an open business section a couple of blocks in, just beyond Willie's bar. Xander thought a moment, then pulled into the small corner parking lot. A wizened blue thing sitting on an overturned milk crate at the entrance handed him a ticket stub without showing much interest in why a human was in his neck of the woods. Unless he didn't think Xander was human. Or didn't care. Xander parked, locked up the car, and went for a stroll.

Window shopping was different in the demon part of town. What looked like a pet store with a lot of kittens behind the barred window turned out to be a pawn shop of some sort, with the proprietor accepting merchandise in exchange for kitties. Unless it was a restaurant of some sort. Xander moved on quickly.

The hardware store's window looked normal and tempting, but he was too restless to go contemplate tools. A fairly spiffy tweed jacket in the men's clothing store next door attracted his eye, despite the Gilesian overtones, until he actually counted the number of sleeves.

He was just pausing to look over the display in the bookstore when someone leaving the store ran into him. He reached out to steady whomever it was and blinked at seeing Jonathan from high school. Jonathan stared at him in horror.

"Y-you!"

Xander blinked. "Me. Fancy meeting you in this part of town." He noticed several books in Jonathan's arms and tilted his head to see the titles.

Jonathan clutched the books to his chest and sidled away. "Love to stay and chat, must go, bye." Once he was out of arms reach, he ran.

"Yeah," Xander muttered, "you're not up to something." He watched Jonathan run down the street towards a van parked facing away. The side door slid back, and Jonathan stumbled into the vehicle. Xander started strolling in that direction, and he smiled slightly as the engine started and the van lurched, then peeled rubber as it left. "Yeah, perfectly innocent Friday night shopping at the demon bookstore."

He hadn't seen the license plate, and anyway, looking up such things would involve trying to get Willow to talk to him, and that wasn't happening very often anymore.

He shook his head, dismissing thoughts that led to dark, appealing spirals. He was out here looking for distraction from the unpleasantnesses creeping through his life. Neon across the street caught his eye, and he focused on the sign in the shop window. Oh. That was a thought. Not the smartest of thoughts, what with potential pain and blood and whatnot, but a thought. Besides, he wondered what the demon version would look like.

He carefully looked both ways, then crossed the street to the store with the sign that said Tattoo.

A prosaic buzzer went off as he opened the shop door. The first thing he noticed was the Wookie. Orangutan. Sasquatch? The . . . person sitting in the barber's chair at the first station at the front of the store was tall and wide and had orange-brown fur sticking out of his plaid shirt sleeves and collar and sprouting profusely from his head. The boots and blue jeans hid the rest of him. Pointed ears stuck up through the fur, and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses rested on the long muzzle. He looked up from his newspaper and blinked in apparent surprise.

"You lost?" he said. His voice was low and rumbly, but his English was better than that of lots of people Xander had gone to school with.

"Not tonight," Xander answered.

The . . . person squinted at him, then sniffed a couple of times. "Don't get many of your sort in here on purpose."

Xander raised an eyebrow. "My sort?"

The orange-furred guy looked a touch concerned. "Human. Are you another sort?"

The answer still held good. "Not tonight." He tried not to laugh at the doubting look he got. If he wasn't careful, he'd get himself thrown out of a demon store for being too odd.

"Yeah." Orange Fur studied him a moment longer, then folded the paper and stood. "So what can I do for you tonight?"

"I think I want a tattoo."

"You think you do. You ever get one before?"

"Nope."

Orange Fur frowned at him over his spectacles. "And you came *here*?"

Xander wondered if he should worry about how casually he was taking all this. "I was outside, I saw the place, I got the idea."

"You're weird."

He nodded gravely. "It's been said."

Orange Fur's muzzle twitched in what was hopefully a smile. "It's your skin. Well, I'm Melvin, and this is my place." He saw Xander's twitch. "What?" he frowned.

"Nothing, nothing. Melvin. It's an interesting name."

"It means 'He who has many children with many females and can feed them all.'" Melvin shrugged. "Shorter to say Melvin."

"I can see where it would be. I'm Xander. What?" he added as Melvin snickered.

"You don't want to know. So . . . Xander. What kind of tattoo are you looking for?"

His bizarre confidence left him. "I don't know."

Melvin stared at him, then sighed. "You are weird." He waved a hand at the walls. "Take a look around. See if anything appeals. Don't freak out at my customers." He went back to his chair and picked up his newspaper.

Xander started to protest that he wasn't going to freak out, then he finally looked around the rest of the shop. The other two chairs were occupied. In the far chair sat something with skin that must have had the consistency of stone, considering the tattoo artist was using a mallet and a very fine-pointed chisel to work on some scrollwork on the creature's arm. The middle chair held an Orion slave girl-uh, woman with green skin-where had the Orion slave girls gone in Next Generation Trek? Were they all emancipated and made to put on clothes?

He paused and took a serious look at where his brain was. He was standing in a weird-creature-owned tattoo shop in the demon part of town, seriously contemplating permanent markings in his flesh, and his squirrel brain was musing on Star Trek rather than self-preservation and basic mortal safety. Where was he currently on the great spectrum of sanity?

He honestly didn't feel threatened, and he got the impression that Melvin would object to ruckuses in his place that might damage current and potential customers. Was he feeling antsy for good reason, or only because he knew he was supposed to be feeling antsy?

A small voice inside said, "Buffy wouldn't approve. Willow wouldn't approve." Yeah, well, where had doing things they approved of gotten him? All alone on a Friday night-standing in a weird-creature-owned-tattoo shop in the demon part of town.

He didn't actually need to get a tattoo. He could just look at all the pictures on the wall and think it over for a while. Call it recon, getting a feel for life on the non-human side of things.

He paused a moment to think that he might just want to spend some of Saturday in a sunny park somewhere, watching typical humans do typical human things. And maybe that wouldn't feel like recon, but more like reality. Whatever reality was supposed to be.

He turned his attention to the pictures on the walls of the tattoo shop waiting area. There were a surprising number of roses and thorns and blood-dripping daggers stabbed through hearts. Were the demons who wanted those kinds of tattoos aping humans, or did the symbolism actually transcend species? A lot of the pictures looked like words in differing language. Xander recognized Greek and Arabic and Fyarl and what was probably Japanese or Chinese. He stepped forward to study the Oriental characters more closely.

"Found something?" Melvin asked from behind his paper.

"Maybe. But for all I know, these say things like Eat at Wong's or My Body Went to Tokyo and All I Got was a Lousy Tattoo." He grinned. "Or, Stupid Human, Good to Eat."

"That scar on your throat says that."

Xander's grin twisted. "No, that one says, Stupid Human, Good to Eat, Still Standing."

"Fair point." Melvin folded the paper and got up. "So you're looking at something in Japanese or Chinese?"

"Maybe. I remember seeing something once that I liked in Japanese. Just a single character. Supposed to represent a tree growing in a doorway. The book said it meant Quiet."

Melvin nodded and went to a desk to pick up a pen and a piece of paper. He sketched out a few lines. "That?"

Xander studied the two gate-like symbols bracketing the smaller symbol. "Yeah, that." He nodded again. "That."

"So you're going to get some ink. Where do you want it?"

He quickly considered his skin and how blatant he wanted to be about casual viewing of possible body modifications. "Small of the back."

Melvin snorted. "Tramp stamp."

Xander glared at him. "I know a lady who has a tattoo in the small of her back, and she would tear out and feed you your gall bladder if you called her a tramp. If you don't have a gall bladder, she'd find one just for the purpose."

If Melvin laughed, he didn't do it out loud. "My apologies to the lady." He glanced around the room. "Gat and Hobe are still going to be awhile, looks like I'll be the one doing the work. Shirt off, in the chair."

"Aren't there some kind of permission forms and liability stuff I have to sign?"

"You don't trust me to do it right, go somewhere else. As for permission, you're not drunk and you walked in alone under your own power. I assume you know what you're doing." Melvin raised what might have been a fuzzy orange eyebrow. "Or don't you?"

"Depends on who you ask." Xander shrugged and pulled off his t-shirt.

Melvin folded back parts of the chair so that the padded back became something Xander could lean his chest against and rest his arms on. Xander watched in the mirror as Melvin mixed inks and pulled up a machine that looked like Laurence Olivier's toy in "Marathon Man."

"So," he said, "how many humans come through here?"

"Not a lot, more than a few."

He slapped something cold and wet against the small of Xander's back, then wiped it off a few seconds later. There was a mirror in front of Xander, where he could see the reflection in the mirrors on the wall behind him. Melvin put the piece of paper with the drawing of the character on his back and rubbed the picture with his thumb. When he pulled the paper off, the character had been transferred to Xander's spine.

Melvin looked up into the mirror. "Look right?"

Xander craned his head, then nodded. "I like it." Just a small little scribble at the base of the spine. Like a punctuation mark, or something on a map that says "You are here." He settled back into the chair. "Let's do it."

Melvin pulled on some gloves, picked up the gun-shaped part of his device, screwed and attached bits to it, and hit a button to make it whirr. He met Xander's eyes in the mirror again. "Last chance to change your mind before something permanent gets done."

Xander looked over the machine, contemplated needles, wondered briefly how they compared to vampire fangs, then folded his arms on the top of the chair and rested his chin. "Bring it."

"OK, starting."

He managed not to jump at the first sting. After the first few, he closed his eyes. It wasn't as bad as vampire bites or demon claws or monster fists . . . or other fists . . . or heartbreak . . .

He focused on the buzz at the base of his spine, virtuously ignoring the other nerves that found the new sensations intriguing, and spent some time contemplating his flesh and bones and not his brain for a change. Footsteps went back and forth behind him occasionally, skittering taps that sounded like hooves, scratchy noises that might have involved claws, the clomp of boots. The buzzer on the door went off a few times, accompanied by various people talking.

Xander's nose twitched at the smell of cigarette smoke. "I guess no one bothers you guys about violating the indoor smoking laws."

Melvin paused in what he was doing to Xander's back. "Yeah, don't get many inspectors through here. Still wish people wouldn't smoke in here, though."

Xander heard the scuff of a boot, and the cigarette smell got stronger. He opened his eyes to look in the mirror. The reflection of Melvin was looking towards his left, where a cloud of smoke hung in the air. No one else was visible in the mirror, but there was a weird empty spot in the middle of the cloud. Xander studied that spot and smirked before settling his chin back down on his folded arms. "So how does it look, Spike?"

A chuckle came from the direction of the cloud. "Ink looks good on you, whelp."


	5. Chapter 5

Melvin hesitated, then turned back to Xander. "Starting up again. Just got one more block to fill in. How you doin', kid?"

Xander closed his eyes again. "Doing fine." He took a deep breath as the buzzing started and the sting came back. "Looking for a tattoo, Spike?"

"Nah," said the lazy voice, "had one back at the turn of the century, but it faded after a decade, so I figured why bother." He paused. "Turn of the last century, that is."

"Let me guess, blood and daggers and thorns."

"Little fish," he said after several moments. "Little burning fish. Chinese bloke did 'em."

Melvin grunted. "Chinese do good work with ink."

Xander thought he recognized the flat, remote tone of Spike's voice. It sounded a lot like that voice on his balcony that bad night. "You're probably the sort to do weird piercings, too."

That got a normal sounding laugh. "I've had more things pierced through my flesh than you can dream of, whelp."

"Not something I try to dream of at all, bleachie."

"I'm guessing you two know each other, then," Melvin said.

Xander and Spike both snickered.

Five minutes later, Melvin straightened and popped his neck. "And that's that." He picked up the hand mirror and angled it so Xander could see the finished product. "And there it is."

In the middle of a red, annoyed-looking spot was a deep black symbol about an inch high, permanently embedded in his flesh. A personal, perpetual place of quiet that would travel with him. He reached around to touch the edge of the red area.

"Stop that," Melvin said. He slapped a regular gauze bandage over the tattoo and taped it down. "Leave that be. You can show it off in the morning. And like your mother told you, don't pick at it or scratch it."

Xander pouted at little at having his new ornament hidden. "That's it? Nothing about treating it or if it starts mutating on me or anything?"

Melvin sighed and Spike snickered. "Gat," Melvin called to the gnarly thing that had been carving on the stone thingy and was now swigging a beer while he read an old People magazine, "where's the sheets with the newbie instructions for tattoos?" Gat headed for a file cabinet, dug around, then came back with a sheet of paper. Melvin glanced at it, then handed it back. "The human instructions, Gat." Gat shrugged, went back, and returned with a different sheet.

Xander took the paper and blinked at the amount of text, then he realized it was one paragraph repeated in about a dozen different languages. The instructions were little more than what Melvin had already said-including the phrase "like your mother told you"-so he decided a quick Google when he got home was a good idea.

He pushed himself off the chair, wincing at stiff joints and the pull of tape on his back. "So what do I owe you?" he asked as he pulled on his shirt. The waistband of his jeans rubbed against the bandage, so he unbuttoned the top button and let the waistband sag a little.

Melvin led the way to the front counter and the register. Xander raised an eyebrow at the credit card stickers on the register. "You guys take Visa?"

"It's the 21st century, kid-by human count, anyway. A modern business needs modern banking." He took Xander's card and ran it through the reader.

"The banks don't care that they're dealing with someone who isn't-" Melvin raised a furry orange eyebrow "-human?"

"It's the color of the money, not the color of the fur. Not everybody can cope, though." He nodded towards Spike. "Old vamps get lost easy."

"Oi!" Spike protested. "I cope just fine, thank you very much."

Xander snickered to himself as he signed the credit card receipt and added a tip, but he studied Spike out of the corner of his eye. The vampire had gone beyond lean and into gaunt. He watched the world around him, but his attention kept drifting to some haunted place behind his eyes, and his forehead knotted unhappily.

He handed back the receipt. "Thanks a lot, Melvin. I'll be sure to recommend you to any of my friends who are looking for tattoos."

"Much obliged, kid. Come on back if anything doesn't look right."

Xander nodded and headed out the door. To none of his surprise, Spike meandered after him.

Things were a little busier out on the street. Some nightclub type place had opened up down the block, with music coming out the open door and a crowd waiting to get in. Xander watched the activity for a bit, wondering what criteria were used in the demon world to determine who was hip enough to let into the hot spots.

"Is that the local equivalent to the Bronze?" he asked Spike, who snorted as he pulled out another cigarette.

"Just about. Desperate losers dancing stupidly to bad music and hoping to get laid." He grinned at Xander through the cloud of smoke. "You'd be very popular."

"Yeah, I don't think so." Xander hesitated, then turned the other way down the street.

"Didn't take you for the ink sort, whelp."

"Didn't used to be. But I've been thinking that my sort may not be completely figured out yet." He looked over when he didn't get a response. Spike walked beside him with his head hanging down and his eyes on the pavement. The tip of the cigarette in his mouth glowed as he inhaled, and he blew the smoke out of the other corner of his mouth. "Was the tattoo in China Dru's idea?"

Spike stopped walking and closed his eyes as he took the cigarette out of his mouth. "Be careful how you say her name, human," he whispered.

Xander swallowed. It had been a long time since he'd actually feared Spike. "Dude, I know it hurts like hell, but you are not the only person to wake up in the morning with the dust of someone you loved in the nooks and crannies of your clothes."

Slowly Spike turned to meet Xander's eyes. "She was mine for over a hundred years," he said softly, in a voice without any trace of the punk Xander was familiar with. "You lost someone you knew for, what, a decade or so?"

Somehow Xander kept from screaming at him. Maybe because he knew so well how it felt. "I knew Jesse all my life. I know that doesn't sound like that much to you, but whether it's sixteen years or a hundred years, all your life is all your life. It's everything you ever knew-and then it's gone."

A shudder went though Spike's shoulders and he looked away. The hand that raised the cigarette back to his lips shook. Xander took a deep, uneven breath and started down the street again. He didn't look over as the vampire tossed the cigarette aside and fell back into step with him.

"This Jesse," Spike said after a minute. "He wasn't-I didn't-"

Xander fought a smile. "No, you weren't even here yet. The Master got him."

Spike grunted. "Pointy faced freak."

"Excuse me?"

"The Master."

"But I thought the Master was some sort of vampire god thing."

"Pffth." Spike's shoulder relaxed some and he waved a hand in the air. "'I've been around forever and I look funny and I live in a hole. Fear me.'" He smiled slightly at Xander's snicker. "Please. He was smart, I'll give you that, stayed up on what was happening in the world, but he believed in all those rituals, the Anointed One and all that shite."

"Whatever happened to the Anointed One? He was supposed to be this big fearsome thing, but then we never heard about him again."

Spike straightened proudly. "I happened to the Anointed One."

Xander raised an eyebrow. "Again with the excuse me?"

"I killed him. Right after St. Vigeous. Got sick and tired of him bleating about the sacred writings and how things should be done, and I tossed him into the sun."

Xander gave a laugh. "Well, yeah, that would do it, I guess."

Spike grabbed his arm and tugged him out of the way of a staggering green demon that was coming down the sidewalk towards them. Xander frowned, then he saw the chipped neon beer signs in the windows of the building next to them and the badly painted sign saying Willy's.

Spike smirked at him. "Fancy a drink, Harris?"

"It's undoubtedly the post-tattoo endorphins talking, but yes, I could go for a beer about now." He grinned at Spike's faint surprise and headed for the bar door.

At first blush, Friday night in a demon bar looked a lot like Friday night in any other bar. Smoke in the air, booze on the floor, indistinct shapes huddled together in corners. Junior Brown's classic "You're Wanted By the Police and My Wife Thinks You're Dead" came from the juke box near the bar.

Xander didn't look too closely at the patrons, just kept his eye on Willy as he strolled up to take a perch at the bar. Willy looked up from the beer taps and did a lovely triple take.

"When did you put country on the juke box?" Xander said, nodding towards the music. "I thought you were a classic rock kind of guy."

Willy gaped at him. "Uh, duh, um . . ."

Spike slithered onto the stool next to Xander. "Damn, looks like the brain worms got him. Hope they just ate the speech center, I want a bourbon."

Beer sloshed out of the glass mugs Willy held. "You-uh."

"Yeah, me. Bourbon. Now. Whelp?"

"Beer," Xander said. "Something unAmerican."

Willy stared a moment, then shook himself and hurried off.

Spike glared at the jukebox. "I think I'll kill it."

"Hey, I like Junior Brown."

"You would."

The drinks arrived with no comments from Willy, who disappeared quickly. Xander inspected the label on the bottle to make sure that it was at least from the Earthly dimension and relaxed at the recognizable German. He twisted the cap off and lifted the bottle to his lips.

"Human!"

"Oh, fuck," Spike muttered.

In the mirror behind the bar, Xander saw something large and blue-green and which he'd last seen knocking down his front door stand up from a booth on the other side of the room. The tentacles around its head writhed happily as the demon moved towards the bar.

"Crap," Xander muttered as he turned. "Hey, Reinhart."

Reinhart flung his arms around Xander and lifted him off the stool. "Well met, honorable human!"

Xander gasped for air, then wheezed when he was dropped back onto his stool.

Spike sipped from his glass, an eyebrow raised. "So you know each other, I take it?"

Xander waved in Reinhart's direction. "He challenged me to a duel."

Reinhart blinked when Spike turned the raised eyebrow in his direction. "The matter was resolved honorably." He turned back to Xander. "I am glad to see you, honorable human. I must speak to you of Anyanka."

Xander pulled himself up to his full height. "What did you do?"

The tentacles curled up tight as Reinhart shook his head. "Nothing, apparently. That is the problem."

"OK, what didn't you do?"

Reinhart frowned. "What is this festival she was talking about, this Christmas?"

"Oh-h," Spike said knowingly.

Xander nodded. "Presents."

Spike grabbed his drink and slid off his bar stool. "Mate, if you've got a woman talking to you about presents, than that requires more comfortable sitting than here at the bar." He led the way back towards Reinhart's booth. "Willy! Another round, over there!"

Spike hip checked Xander to get the spot in the corner of the booth against the wall, leaving Xander on the end of the bench with the entire bar staring at him with various degrees of suspicious interest. He focused his own interest on the demon accountant and the vampire. "So, Anya's been making hints about what she wants for Christmas?"

Reinhart nodded. "Yes, and I have heard vague things about this festival, reindeer and a baby and shepherds and a creature who can enter any residence and leave gifts. It is very confusing."

Spike lit up a cigarette. "Christmas is a human thing, but this one is worth the trouble. People wander around and visit each other and you can get invitations into just about anyone's house just for the asking-"

"Christmas started out as a religious holiday," Xander interrupted, "and it's turned into the biggest holiday of the year. You give presents to the people you care about, and you have parties and generally try to treat people as nicely as you're supposed to the rest of the year."

Reinhart frowned. "Presents. Anyanka said something about putting thought into it and not just buying the first thing that caught my eye."

Spike smirked at Xander. "Went out and grabbed something from the convenience store on Christmas Eve, did you?"

"That was the first year," Xander snapped, "and I didn't get paid till late. All the other years I put some effort into it."

"Ah ha!" Reinhart said. "Christmas is a competition to see who can bring home the most attractive prey!"

Spike thought a moment. "Yeah, that pretty much covers it."

Xander shrugged and nodded. "And if it's not up to her standards, you'll hear about it."

"And be careful of the blokes who might try to give her something better than you do," Spike added, glowering into his drink.

Reinhart frowned. "Cogs in Special Events has been asking questions about my plans. And he watches Anyanka with longing eyes."

"Guys, it's not just about the expensive presents," Xander said. "A woman likes a man who pays attention to her and makes her laugh."

Spike and Reinhart both stared at him, then Spike looked at Reinhart. "It's a human thing."

Reinhart laughed. "You are mostly human, vampire, for all that you have a demon inside you."

"I am not!"

"You don't look that much different," Xander said to Reinhart. "Except for the-" he gestured at the tentacles on Reinhart's head. "Two arms, two legs, stand upright. That's pretty humanoid."

Reinhart drew himself up. "I am not humanoid."

"Oh, sorry."

Spike took another slug of his drink. "The biped thing, that's mostly environment. You've got to be able to stand up and reach something at some point in evolution."

"Since when did the Victorians know anything about evolution, Spike?"

As Spike glared, Willy showed up with the next round of drinks. Xander realized his beer was already empty and picked up the new bottle. Willy collected the empties then looked around at the three of them. "So, uh, whose tab does this round go on?"

Spike studied his fingernails, and Xander shook his head. "My round, Willy." He reached for his wallet.

Willy took the twenty nimbly, then peered at Xander. "Are you sure you're old enough to buy booze, kid?"

"You ask me this *after* taking my money?"

Spike leaned forward. "The boy kills demons, git. I think he can handle a beer." Willy scurried away without any further argument.

Reinhart took his own bubbling mug and chuckled. "You humans are amusing."

"I already told you, mate, I'm not human."

Xander looked between Spike and Reinhard. "Could you turn him into a vampire?" he asked Spike, nodding at Reinhard.

"He could not, honorable Xander," Reinhard said. "Vampirism is something that happens to humans."

"So demons are, what, a different species? But there are demons that can have kids with humans."

Spike smirked. "You were reading *those* books in the old library, weren't you."

"I'm not talking to you." Xander looked back at Reinhard and raised his eyebrows questioningly.

Reinhard looked-embarrassed. "Yes . . . there have been matings between humans and the creatures you call demons."

Xander frowned, trying to remember information from the biology classes he'd generally slept through. "So if humans and demons can have kids, then biologically they're not that different from each other. Which means we descended from the same ancestors."

Reinhard nodded. "There are many intelligent races on this world. It is not only humans who have raised civilizations here."

Xander looked around the barroom. There were several fully human looking people, but there were lots of other types of creatures in the place, too, things with horns and tails and multiple limbs. In the science fiction shows all the aliens looked like humans because all the actors were humans. This time, though, maybe all the demons looked like humans because they were in a human-friendly environment and the truly alien looking things couldn't survive in this environment. Like in Babylon 5, with the areas of the station with the non-human environments for the non-humans.

"Why do the others come here?" he turned and asked Reinhard. "What is so interesting about Earth that demons show up?"

Reinhard thought a moment, then shrugged. "There are so many different types of humans, for all that you look alike. You're so very creative and entertaining."

"And you taste good," Spike added, grinning. He snickered at Xander's glare. "You lot are never boring. You've got lives like mayflies, and you manage to come up with all these different ways to entertain yourselves."

"Your world changes so very quickly," Reinhard added. "Other races, we have much more sedate lives. Twenty years is nothing to my people, yet for you, your entire existence can be turned on its head."

Xander pulled out his cell phone and looked at it. "These were barely getting started when I was born, now you can buy one at the 7-Eleven."

"Dru hated those little phones," Spike said quietly. "She couldn't stand the push buttons. She loved sticking her finger in the holes on the dial and listening to the whirr." He hunched his shoulders and stared into his glass.

Xander let him be. "I once caught Anya in the bathroom, flushing the toilet over and over. I told her to stop wasting water, and she gave me a lecture on privies and moss and the poor schmuck who had to shovel out the garderobe." He subsided into his own depressed slump.

Spike straightened, then slouched back against the wall again. "So where did all this come from, whelp? Used to be, you were all 'Kill the vampires, demons are evil, slay 'em all.' Gonna start up a chapter of 'Demons are People Too'?"

"There is such a group?" Reinhard asked. "Gunnird keeps putting up fliers promoting a group he belongs to, named 'Humans, More Than Just Breakable Toys.'"

Xander blinked at him, then leaned on the table and laughed.

"Is he ill?" Reinhard asked Spike.

"Nah, he just gets like that occasionally. It wears off, but sometimes you've got to shock him to get him out of it. Speaking of which-Evening, Slayer, fancy seeing you here."

Xander braced himself on his arms, wheezing. "Yeah, right, Buffy's really standing right-"

He heard a familiar, female gasp of disbelief-"Xander?!"-and choked.

Slowly he raised his head to see Buffy standing next to him, staring at him in disbelief. He blinked for a few moments. "So," he said brightly, "what's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"

She blinked at him, obviously still fighting for words, until a floppy eared demon bounced up to Buffy's side. "Miss Buffy! Hi! I never thought I'd see you in here."

Years of Mrs. Summers' careful etiquette training apparently paid off. She still looked completely confused, but she managed a sincere smile at the the demon. "Oh, hi, Clem, how are you?"

Xander blinked, then turned to look at Spike, who was also looking flummoxed. Xander pointed back over his shoulder and tilted his head questioningly. Spike slowly shook his head. Xander turned back around. "Hey," he said to Clem. He took a quick breath and put out his hand. "I'm Xander."

Clem's ears perked up as he grinned and shook hands. "Hey, Xander."

He'd had social graces training, too. "This is Reinhard, and this is Spike."

"Oh, I know Spike, we play poker. Hey, Spike, hey, Reinhard."

Spike waved his bourbon glass, and Reinhard nodded.

Xander looked back at Buffy, who was still looking from person to person with a confused and uneasy look on her face. "What *are* you doing here, Buff? Not your usual hangout."

She focused on him with something that looked almost like gratitude. "It's not yours either." She frowned. "Is it?"

"No, I just wandered in here with Spike."

"With Spike? Since when are you hanging around with Spike?"

Spike smirked. "Oh, I just ran across the whelp in a tattoo parlour down the street."

Buffy stared at him, closed her eyes and shook her head hard, then grabbed Xander's arm and hauled him out of the booth. Xander managed not to yelp too loudly. "Excuse me, guys, I'm needed over this way."

He managed to dig his heels in enough to stop his progression before Buffy made it too far towards the door. Slayer-strong she may be, but height and mass did count for a little something in leverage. She turned and was about to speak, and he pulled them towards a nook between the bar and an empty table.

"What are you doing?" she demanded.

"That's what I was going to say, but you beat me to it. What are you doing?"

"Getting you out of here!"

"Why?"

Her mouth dropped open, then she took a deep breath.

"Don't yell," he added quickly.

The air whooshed out of her, and she took another, slower breath. "Why are you hanging out in Willy's with Spike after being in a tattoo parlour? Did you get a tattoo?"

He stomped down on his automatic defensiveness. "Yes, I did."

"Oh, my god, why, a tattoo? In some kind of filthy demon place, with the needles and ick, and why?" She even had her hands on her hips as she glared at him.

"Because I wanted to," he finally said after having to take a couple of breaths. "So, how do you know Clem?" he asked before she could finishing inhaling. "The two of you seem very cozy."

"I met him one night when I was out hunting." She flipped her hair back and raised her chin. "And how did you meet Reinhard?"

"He knocked down my front door by accident when he came by to challenge me to a duel over Anya."

She straightened up into Defender stance. "He challenged you-"

"Old news, Buff, that's all been settled. Anya granted him the right to try and woo her, and he wants to know what he should get her for Christmas."

Buffy relaxed and looked confused, but it morphed into a bemused smile. "Did you ever think that maybe our lives are weird?"

He gave her a fake-worried frown. "And this is only dawning on you now?"

She looked towards Reinhard and the others, then her eyes went to Spike, and all humor faded. "How can you just sit down and have a drink with him after what he did?"

"After what he-Oh. The Watchers."

"Yeah," she snapped, "remember them?"

Honestly, he hadn't, not really. Except as the reason for why Spike was so torn up over Drusilla. Even Angel's grief and rage had made more of an impression than what had happened to the Watchers. He had to face it, though, nearly a dozen humans had been killed by the vampire he had been chatting so casually with. That gut squirm of guilt and horror reassured him that not all his Scoobie instincts were dead, but life had been much simpler before his hat had turned grey.

Buffy's stern look faded a little. "You shouldn't be here, Xander."

"And you should be?" he snapped.

"Well, I am-"

He put up a finger. "And don't say because you're the Slayer."

"Well, I am! And this is my town, and I need to stay on top of things, and stuff is happening that I don't know about." She gave the room an all-inclusive glare. "Demons robbing banks, cameras in my house . . ." She shrugged angrily. "Willy sometimes knows stuff. I thought I'd come see if he'd heard anything."

"I don't know what it's worth," Xander said, "but I saw Jonathan coming out of a bookstore just down the street, and he was not at all happy to see me. He jumped into a van that drove away awful fast."

Buffy frowned. "Well, what the heck is he up to now, and who's he working with? Dammit." She mulled it over unhappily for a few moments, then looked back up at Xander. "You really should get home."

He managed not to say the first two things that came to mind. "I've got a drink and a conversation to finish."

"With the demon who wants to date Anya."

"Well, we hadn't gotten to that part, yet, we were talking about the comparative evolution of humans and demons when you showed up."

"Huh?"

He wanted to tell her what he was learning, about possible common ancestors and everything, but he suddenly remembered running home in the second grade to tell his mother about how cool the rocks looked under the magnifying glass Mr. Armstrong the Science Teacher had passed around, and his mother had blinked at him, half-drunk, and said blearily, "That's nice, honey."

"I'm going back over there, Buffy," he finally said. "Be careful going home or wherever." He turned to go.

"Xander-" She reached for his arm, and he spun and caught her wrist. She gaped at him, blinking, then looked down at his large hand clamped around her slender wrist. "Um, ow?"

"Fuck." He let go and backed away. Buffy stared at him and absently rubbed her wrist. "I'm-dammit. Good night, Buffy." She just nodded.

Spike, Reinhard, and Clem were pointedly not staring as Xander went back to the booth. Xander dropped into his seat and drained his beer.

"Something stronger would probably sit well at the moment," Spike observed over his glass.

"God, the last thing I need is something stronger." Xander rubbed his forehead and tried not to hate himself.

"You didn't hurt her."

"She said ow."

"You rattled her, that's all. She's not used to her minions using her own tools against her."

Xander glared at Spike. "We are not minions."

Spike shrugged and sipped his drink. "She just left, by the way."

Xander looked towards the door, which was closing on a Slayer-less bar. He took a deep breath and turned back to Reinhard, whose tentacles were coiled up tight in discomfort again. "So, Christmas. Anya. Has she given you a list yet?"

Reinhard fidgeted with his own glass. "Yes, she has, and there are many things on it I do not understand. What is lingerie, and why did she say I'm not allowed to purchase her any yet?"

"Oh, god," Spike muttered. "Oh, explain this, whelp, I want to hear it."

Clem looked between them. "I think I saw some of that on Home Shopping Network. It didn't make sense."

Xander rubbed his head again and wondered if wanting to laugh was a sign of sanity or what.

* * *

The morning was bright and sunny when Buffy opened the front door to a bouncing, smiling Willow. "Good morning, Buffy!"

Buffy smiled despite herself. "Hey, Wills, thanks for coming over. Tara couldn't make it?"

"No, she went to class. One of us should take notes."

"One of you?" Buffy tried to look stern. "Willow, are you cutting class?"

Willow looked dignified. "It's for a noble cause, summoned to aid the Slayer. Besides, when's *your* next class?"

"Three o'clock, so there." She gestured Willow in and closed the door. "But I am glad you could come. I need some help searching the house."

"For what?"

"These." Buffy pulled the little cameras out of her pocket and handed them to Willow. "I found them in my bedroom, and I'm afraid there are more of them."

"Euw, in your bedroom? These are spy cameras!"

"Yeah, double on the euw from my side. And if there are any in Dawn's room or Mom's room-"

"Euw! Who put them there?"

"We can check that after we find out if there are more of these little suckers."

Willow pulled off her backback and dug out her spell casting materials. She used a piece of canvas instead of drawing a circle on the Summers' carpet, then sketched out the circle and runes. She put the cameras in the circle, sat down next to it, and held out her hands. "Invenio," she said.

A group of tiny gold lights rose from the cameras, hovered for a moment, then flew out. One zipped to a vase of silk flowers on a shelf next to the TV, and one shot into the kitchen. Another went upstairs.

"Dammit," Buffy muttered. She hesitated between going to the vase or upstairs, then ran for the staircase.

Up in the hallway, a glow was coming out of the eye socket of a South American angel sculpture hanging on the wall across from the bathroom. Buffy hesitated, just in case, then remembered Giles had certified that sculpture as 100% supernatural influence-free. And someone had come into her house and messed with it. She reached into the eye socket and pulled out the glowing little camera. She scowled into its lens then crushed it in her fingers.

She ran back downstairs. Willow was peering cautiously into the vase on the shelf.

"Just pull it out and squish it, Wills," Buffy said.

"No, I think I can figure out where it's transmitting to. These things don't have a very long broadcast range. There must be something somewhere picking up the signal and boosting it." Willow drew a circle in the air above the vase, making glittery sparks of light appear. Waves rippled out from the vase, picking up the sparks. "Qua es vos iens," she muttered. All the sparks joined into one and shot out through the wall.

"Oh, now where," Buffy said, heading for the front door.

She looked around the house for a glowing spot but couldn't find one. Willow followed her out, frowning. "It couldn't have gone very far."

Buffy studied the cars parked on the street. There weren't any vans in view, and the only cars belonged to the neighbors. "Could it be going to a car?"

"None of those cars are glowing, and that spell showed it was being actively received somewhere." Willow's eyes narrowed, and she turned to study the house. "Aperio," she said firmly. The base of the rhododendron at the corner of the porch began to glow.

"Whoa," Buffy said. "What was that?"

"It was cloaked," Willow frowned. "Whoever put those cameras in the house shielded their receiver with magic."

"So not only are they Inspector Gadget, they're Mr. Wizard too?"

"Science and magic, yup." Willow tilted her head. "It's really kind of neat." Buffy glared at her. "Or not."

Willow pulled a long crystal out of her bag, tied a string around the middle of it, then performed a spell to track the signal. Buffy then took a deep breath, and they got in Joyce's car.

Buffy drove slowly, anxiously watching the road and the crystal direction finder. It led them to a residential district about a mile away from Revello Drive. Buffy carefully parked, running up on the curb only once.

Willow stared at her in wonder. "You just parallel parked!"

Buffy grinned. "I know!" She looked out at the street and shrugged. "Of course, it helps that there's nobody else on the street to bump into."

"Still!" Willow got out and looked admiringly at the distance of the wheels from the curb. "Oz tried to teach me how to do this once. He kept wincing when I hit the curb, though, so that lesson didn't last long."

Buffy joined her on the sidewalk. "You need to invent a car that parks itself by magic."

"Oh, that would be neat." Willow studied her dangling crystal. "That way."

The house they were led to looked a little shabbier than its neighbors. The lawn hadn't been mown in quite a while. They paused on the sidewalk in front to study the place.

"It stinks of magic," Willow said, frowning. "Dark magic."

The front door didn't look like it had seen much use. Buffy headed towards the driveway. Some of the oil stains on the concrete were still wet. The basement door in the side of the house wasn't latched completely.

Willow grabbed her arm just before Buffy stepped onto the concrete stoop in front of the door. "There's something in that bush." Willow picked up a small branch from under an unpruned rose bush and waved it cautiously over the stoop. Two spikes on wires shot out from the rhododendron on the other side of the stoop and into the rose bush. The rose bush shivered under an electrical discharge.

Buffy jumped back. "What the heck!"

"Taser," Willow said. "Boobytrap."

"Oh, whoever this is so needs their butts kicked."

Willow poked at the rhododendron, then pulled out a tiny laser emitter. "Here's their tripwire."

Buffy glared at it. "Do you see anything else?"

"Nope."

"OK." She kicked the basement door open. It bounced off an inside wall and would have slammed close except that it was cracked in three places.

Willow blinked. "So we're not going with the subtle approach today."

"Nope."

Buffy ripped off a piece of door and slid it down the stairs. At the third stair from the bottom, another taser shot out of the wall and embedded spikes in the opposite wall.

"If a boulder starts rolling down the stairs,"Willow said, "I am not going to be happy."

Buffy went to the bottom of the stairs and stopped, studying the room beyond. Workbenches and computers lined three of the walls, but three comfy recliners were gathered around a really big screen TV on the fourth wall. Potato chip bags lay around the chairs, and a Pringles can was upside down in one of the recliners. Several dozen Mountain Dew cans were scattered around, a few on their sides with soda still spreading out on the floor.

Buffy frowned. "They didn't leave that long ago."

Willow prowled through the equipment, tapping on keyboards. "It looks like they've all been erased. I guess they knew we were coming?"

"Squishing all their cameras would have been a big clue." Buffy picked a crumpled t-shirt off the floor with two reluctant fingers. "God, if there was ever a time when Slayer senses were a bad thing. This looks like your neighbors' room at the dorm."

Willow nodded. "The tech nerd's dream home. Huh." She began rummaging through a pile of papers stashed behind a bank of monitors. "What the heck?"

"What?" Buffy asked, coming over and stepping carefully over piles of things on the floor. She stared at a square empty space. "It looks like they took some stuff with them."

"Yeah, there are gaps in the mess. Look at this." She handed over some pages.

Buffy frowned at the diagrams of a female form, with added wiring and circuitry. "What is this?"

Willow bit her lip. "Robotics."

"Robotics? Like-creepy Ted robotics?"

"Uh huh." Willow folded up the pages she held. "It looks like they were building a robot."

"A girl-bot! Euw! They've got diagrams for the texture of-Euw!" She glared around. "Do you think it's around here somewhere?"

"They probably took it with them, if they'd gotten to the assembly stage." Willow crumpled up the pages and tried to stuff them in her backpack.

"What are those?" Buffy asked.

"You don't want to see them."

"More robot diagrams?"

"Really, you don't-"

"Oh my god, were they building a copy of Dawn!? Let me see!"

Willow started to argue, then winced and handed over the pages.

Buffy flattened out the pages and stared. The first page was a diagram of the robot's head-with her face. The next page was a full-body sketch. The next one was another full-body sketch-of her in a French maid's outfit waving a feather duster. The last page was full of scribbled phrases-"Yes, Master" and "You're so strong!" and "Isn't it a little warm for all those clothes?"

"Dialogue?" she gasped.

Willow wrung her hands. "I told you you didn't want to see them."

"They were making a robot version of me? To be their little slave?" She shoved the pages back. "Find them. God, is that why they had the cameras in the house? To get-ideas?" Her eyes went huge. "My missing clothes . . ."

Willow hugged her. "We'll find them, Buffy. And then we'll kick their butts."

Buffy put her arms around Willow. "What if they've already built it? What if they're . . . doing things with it?"

Willow moved her away and looked into her eyes. "Something like this would take a lot of work. And you wouldn't be able to get the parts at Radio Shack. I'll do some checks when I get home with electronics supply houses. And something that looked like you but wasn't you will be very easy to find magically. We won't let them get away with it. Let's see what else we can find here."

In the refrigerator, among lots of boxes of takeout food, were some bottles of glowing liquid. Willow didn't think they were a weird sort of soda and tucked them into her backpack. Buffy disabled another set of booby traps on the steps up into the house. The upstairs didn't look lived in except for three bedrooms and a very gross bathroom.

Willow winced at the mess. "Maybe they really do want the robot to clean up after them?"

"Yeah, I don't think so."

Buffy searched the bedrooms. She called in Willow to look at some magic paraphernalia in one room, and in another she found a photograph of three young men. "Hey, this is Jonathan!"

"From high school Jonathan?"

"Yeah, in the tower with the rifle. I don't recognize the other two." She looked at the picture more closely. The trio were wearing equipment harnesses of some sort. "I think they're playing Ghostbusters or something."

Willow came into the room, stuffing more things into her pack. She looked at the picture. "Those devices look like some of the diagrams I saw downstairs."

Buffy frowned. "Science doohickeys and all that magic stuff . . . they look like they're in a comic book. Willow, did you see anything that might be a freeze ray?"

"Um, like the notebook I found that said Freeze Ray on it? Oh! The jewel heist and the guard and all that!"

"Yeah, like that. And demons robbing banks."

"I found books on demon raising in one of the bedrooms." Willow shrugged. "Nothing really obscure, Giles had those books, but there were lots of bookmarks-and he dog-eared the pages!"

Buffy smiled and hid how much hearing her Watcher's name still hurt. Then she frowned. "He had books on raising demons at the Magic Box?"

Willow fidgeted and blushed. "Uh, yeah, at the store, um, behind . . ."

Buffy hugged her. "Yeah, I can guess what qualified as behind the counter stuff for him. Xander said he saw Jonathan coming out of a bookstore in the demon part of town last night," she added, changing the subject.

Willow perked up. "You saw Xander?" She frowned. "What was he doing hanging around demon stores?"

"He was-he was getting a tattoo. With Spike!"

"He and Spike got tattoos?"

"I don't know if Spike got a tattoo. But he and Xander were having a drink at Willy's, and they were hanging out with a real demon-y demon, and Xander didn't even seem to care!"

"Maybe it was a magic tattoo! Maybe Spike's controlling him somehow."

Buffy frowned. "If Spike was controlling him, I don't think he'd just be making him hang out at Willy's with him."

Willow grimaced. "Yeah, that does seem a bit . . . tame for Spike."

They both paused, and neither admitted what they thought Spike might be forcing Xander to do.

Buffy slumped. "Have you seen Xander much? What with summer school and the Watchers and the vampires and everything, I haven't been paying attention to him as much as I should."

Willow fidgeted. "Ooh, no, I haven't. I was doing school stuff-and studying stuff, then there was Amy, and-oh, I'm a bad friend."

"We're not bad friends, Will, we're just . . ."

"Bad friends."

"Yeah, probably, kinda. On a Hellmouth."

"Did he look OK?" Willow asked in a small voice.

"I-think so. He was laughing when I saw him."

Willow frowned. "He was talking to demons and laughing? But he hates demons."

"That's what I thought." She rubbed her wrist. "I tried to get him out of there, but he wouldn't go."

"He gets stubborn. I should call him."

Buffy nodded. "Me too." She looked around the bedroom. "And find these jerks. And finish that paper for Sociology."

Willow nodded. "I've got Information Management for the Sciences." She brightened. "And Amy needs some help with catching up in classes."

"She's only been back what, a couple of days? And she's in classes already? Doesn't she need a little more 'Hey, I've only got two feet, yay!' time?"

"She said she didn't want to dwell on that," Willow shrugged. "I took her by the high school. Or what's left of it. She was very impressed."

Buffy found herself nostalgic for the simplicity of blowing things up to stop the bad guy. "So she's doing OK? Does she have a place to live?"

"Oh, yeah! Sure! Turns out the bank has been paying the mortgage on her house the whole time, very handy, she's all set. And her college fund is right there, ready and waiting."

"Yeah, that's . . . handy." Really, really handy.

Willow jumped and looked at her watch. "Crap, I've got class in half an hour. We should grab these papers and stuff and get going. We can see about tracking these guys down later."

Buffy nodded. "Yeah, I've got class too in a couple of hours. I should probably at least look at the cover of the book that has the reading that was supposed to be done."

"Poor Buffy. There's a spell I found that helps you retain knowledge, it's really handy during cram sessions!"

Buffy grinned at her. "So that's your secret, huh? Magical cheat sheets?"

"It is not! I don't cheat in class!"

The pout did not look faked, and Buffy hid her laugh. "Sorry, sorry, I know you don't, you don't need to." She sighed as they packed up more sheets of paper and headed towards the basement. "I can retain the knowledge. I just have to find the time to sit down and meet the knowledge."

Willow nodded decisively. "Like when Giles would go with you on patrol and quiz you on stuff. We need to find you a slayage tutor."

Buffy let her go down the basement steps first so she wouldn't see the wince at yet another memory of Giles. She used to go into the Magic Box when she was stumped in class, and Giles would look so excited about what she was studying.

"What's wrong?" Willow stood at the bottom of the steps, looking up.

Buffy hurried down. "I-I was just thinking about Giles. I miss him."

"I think he misses you too."

"As much as a vampire can miss a Slayer, I guess."

"Oh, but he-" Willow bit her lip. "When we were at the convent . . ."

Buffy sighed. "Wills, he's not Giles-with-extra-pointy-bits. He's a vampire. He goes by Ripper. He killed a whole bunch of Watchers. He probably knew most of them! He sure knew Quentin Travers!" She stopped at the threatening tears in Willow's eyes and hugged her. "I'm sorry, Wills. I know he was helping you with that spell and everything, but we can't forget what he is."

Willow hugged her back. "But-didn't the Watchers kill Drusilla? He got mad, didn't he?"

Buffy smiled and squeezed just hard enough to get a tiny oof out of Willow. Poor Willow, so eager to see the best in everyone. Everyone who wasn't Cordelia in high school. "Yeah, he got mad." She stepped back and kept her hands on Willow's shoulders, staring her in the eye. "But the Watchers can't let him stay like this. He's not eating pig blood, Wills. He and Spike hunt, and it's just because I haven't caught them at it that I haven't tried harder to stop them. And I'm going to have to do it eventually."

A tear escaped. "But-Giles."

She pulled Willow into her arms again. "I know." She hoped her sniff was hidden by Willow's own.

* * *

The dorm was full of people celebrating the end of classes for the day. Tara picked her way through the clumps clogging the hallway debating whether to go to the cafeteria for dinner or to go somewhere else, or whether to just get started with the drinking for the night. The group blocking Tara's dormroom was talking about blowing off the next day's classes and going down to Los Angeles for the weekend.

Tara had to excuse herself three times before the group shifted out of her way without acknowledging her. She used to appreciate being ignored, but her anonymity was beginning to irk her. The trouble was that it wasn't the attention of her feckless neighbors that she wanted.

"Sweetheart?" she called as she opened the door. "Willow?"

Miss Kitty raised her head from the middle of the bed and mewed.

"Hello, kitty." Tara put her book bag on her desk and went to sit on the bed and pet Miss Kitty. "Is your other mommy home?" The cat was far more interested in head skritches than in answering.

Tara let herself enjoy the peace of a happy kitty for a while before checking for herself. The bathroom was empty, and Willow's bookbag was missing. There was a pile of notebooks and paperwork covered in unfamiliar writing on her desk; one of the notebooks said Freeze Ray. Tara started to open the notebook, but she hesitated at the weird sticky stain on the cover.

Flickering light on the bulletin board caught her eye. A will o' the wisp danced on the head of a thumbtack holding a note. Tara thanked the wisp and released it, frowning slightly. Will o' the wisps weren't strictly living beings or actual spirits, but they had awareness and responded to the way they were treated. She didn't like the idea of one being used as an animated Post-It note.

She read the note and frowned again. Willow had gone out with Amy again. This time there wasn't even a reason given for being out. She crumpled the paper in her hand and muttered "Incendio." The next moment, she welcomed the bite of the tiny flash fire as punishment for using magic in anger. But she couldn't deny that she was angry. And afraid.

Was Willow so fascinated by Amy because Amy knew magic that Willow didn't? Or was she fascinated by blonde prettiness? Tara hadn't spent much time with Amy, the returned girl always seemed impatient to be out and about when she dropped by the dorm. Which was only to be expected, there was a whole world to reacquaint herself with. And Willow was eager to be Amy's guide. Tara had noticed them whispering together, and Amy kept touching Willow's arm while they talked.

The last time Tara had dared to question the time Willow spent with Amy, Willow had looked pleased and spent the evening trying to prove that any jealousy was baseless. That memory would be sweeter if it weren't followed by the recollection of Willow whispering her sleep charm in Tara's ear before slipping out again. This time Tara had heard Willow greet Amy out in the hallway as she closed the door, so she didn't think there was going to be another trip to see Mr. Giles.

Tara wiped the ash from her hand, sat down on the bed, and picked up Miss Kitty. She should tell someone that Willow was going off to visit vampires. Willow had said Mr. Giles had helped her with the spell that restored Tara's mind from Glory's grasp, and apparently the magic lessons were continuing.

Tara knew she wasn't nearly as daring as Amy, unwilling to wander off at a moment's notice for an adventure. Maybe Willow was tired of Tara's careful, stick-in-the-mud approach to life. Sometimes she felt so old compared to the people around her. It was normal for kids in college to be planning parties and running around yelling in excitement for the weekend. Her mother had called her an old soul, and taking care of the family had fallen to her early, after her mother had died. She hadn't been allowed time to be footloose, and she didn't feel any desire to make up for lost time.

She huffed into Miss Kitty's fur, debating being rebellious now. Then she had to laugh. Her idea of rebellion was waiting till only a couple of days before an assignment was due to work on the paper, or not rinsing out a glass as soon as she was done with it. Running off without a plan rarely worked well, she mused, flexing the hand that had been broken that spring. But there was running around recklessly, then there was putting off minor responsibilities in favor of other responsibilities.

The responsible voice in her said she should wait for Willow to come home, make sure she was all right. The voice that had made her gather her things and take a bus to California, however, stated clearly that it was very sad to hide in her room and wait for her lover to remember her existence. Before her responsible side could even put together a valid argument, Tara kissed Miss Kitty farewell, topped off the food and water bowls, and gathered a sweater to go out again.

Christmas decorations were starting to make an appearance, even though there were still a couple of weeks till Thanksgiving. In a balmy California evening, it seemed mildly ridiculous to be preparing for harvest festivals and winter holidays. Tara paused, though, to smell the faint bite in the wind and the smoke from an illegal leaf fire somewhere. Maybe she should take the bus down to the beach this weekend, it had been months since she'd been to the ocean. Her soul had very nearly giggled in delight the first time she'd heard the roar of waves breaking against the shore.

Or maybe a trip into the forest. She'd always wanted to see the giant redwoods. Such ancient living things would be wonderful to walk among. Back home she would walk through stands of old maples and oak, feeling the universe breathe against her skin. She would love to take Willow into an ancient, breathing forest, maybe get her to feel the deep life that fueled everything, the magic that flowed everywhere-

Tara's steps slowed, and she grimaced. Willow would be thrilled to feel that magic, but instead of immersing herself in it and feeling her connection to the world, she'd probably grin in excitement and start using it for something. She never seemed to see the point of simply experiencing the power in the universe, of feeling the ebb and flow of life and your own place in it. Whenever Tara managed to talk her into meditation, Willow would sit quietly for a few minutes, then start to fidget. Tara had observed her through half-open eyes, her eyes firmly shut but her fingers twitching, moving in half-formed spells before sternly clutching together to try and resist the temptation. It was only after making love that Willow's eager mind could seem to slow enough to bask in the universe. But they couldn't stay in bed forever.

Tara blushed and smiled to herself at the thought of trying, then she composed herself and continued walking. She found herself in the artsy part of town, near Mrs. Summer's gallery. She headed in that direction.

A string of Christmas lights had been hung along the porch in front of the gallery. Through the windows, Tara saw Joyce carrying pine boughs around the gallery, holding them against shelves and frowning. Tara hugged herself in quiet delight to see her moving around so freely, then headed in. As she opened the front door, she brushed her fingers against the door jamb, whispering the words to reinforce the charm she'd drawn months before to protect all inside.

Joyce looked up and smiled. "Hello, Tara." She glanced towards the doorway and the door closed. "You're on your own tonight?"

"Yes, just me."

"Now, it's never *just* you," Joyce scolded fondly. She held the pine bough in her hand against a shelf of kachina dolls. "Does this look right or does it just clutter up the view?"

Tara studied the arrangement. "I'm afraid it clutters up the view. Do you have any little twinkle lights you could put there?"

"I do, but I don't want the place to look like the Las Vegas Strip. I had to talk Anya out of a lighted animated snowman by the door out front holding a sign that said Christmas Specials."

"Not quite the image you want, no."

On the counter was an old cardboard box divided into sections. In each section was an old glass ornament. Tara looked them over, not daring to touch the fragile things. Joyce came over and gently picked up a blue and silver orb. "My grandparents had ornaments like these. They were always careful to hang them where Buffy couldn't reach them, though she tried very, very hard. A young man came in a few days ago with these and said he had no place to hang them but he couldn't bear to just throw them out."

"Are you going to take them home and hang them up?"

Joyce winced. "I was . . . but things happen at the house that are bad for breakable things."

"People are breakable."

"That's very true, but people can try to get out of the way when things are happening." She held the ornament up to the light. "I can't decide between hanging them in the windows with very secure hangers or putting them in a basket on the counter."

They arranged things for several minutes, and Tara put the basket of ornaments on top of the case that held the three remaining Hopi spirit bowls to see how the arrangement looked. The bowls had been rearranged in a triangular layout in the case; Tara shifted the bowl of ornaments to see if it interfered with the view of the spirit bowls. She let her senses drift a little, reaching for an awareness of the bowls' auras.

The red bowl muttered bitterly to itself, unaware of anything else. The green bowl buzzed in Tara's ears, making her think of locusts looking for somewhere to swarm. She felt the sense of something malevolent that had been bound, and wondered if the bowl had been used to counter a curse that had been cast on a crop. She sent only the briefest of touches to the brown bowl, feeling a sticky sort of wrongness that tried to settle in her lungs. She pulled away from the bowls completely, wondering uneasily what the black bowl had contained.

"Are you all right, dear?" Joyce asked, pausing as she arranged candles on a plate at the counter.

"I think so. The bowls-aren't very nice."

Joyce came over to peer into the case. "Do you think they're something that I shouldn't have around? Or should I send them over to the Magic Box? Anya has cases with magical shielding."

"I don't know. Mr. Wyndam-Price didn't think there was any harm in them, and most of the people who come here are looking for art, not magical tools."

"I wonder how that man knew they were here," Joyce said, looking at the door thoughtfully. "I wonder if he was tracking it." She looked at Tara. "Would Willow know if the bowls are safe?"

Tara hesitated, not willing to say anything about Willow and magic.

Joyce studied her for several moments, glanced at her watch, then went to the front door to lock it and turn the Open sign to Closed. "Join me for some tea, dear."

Tara started to protest, then followed Joyce into the back room.

Tea was something cinamonny and slightly spicy, accompanied by gingerbread. She bent her head over her cup, breathing in the fragrance and hating the way she had to fight down tears.

Joyce dropped a quilted cosy over the tea pot and sat down on the other side of the table. She picked up her cup and hummed happily as she sniffed the steam. She smiled at Tara. "Tell me what's wrong," she said softly.

With a deep breath, Tara did. She told how Willow slipped away at night, how Willow went to meet Amy, the disagreements over magic. "I-I think I'd worry less if I knew Willow was just talking to Amy about magic, but . . ." She couldn't bring herself to say it out loud, her fear that Willow was finding her as lacking in love as she did in magic. And she didn't want to talk about the sleep spells. Just yet.

Joyce stared into the depths of her teacup. "I remember when I first-when I first suspected my husband was . . ." She shook her head and looked at Tara. "It was very hard. I wondered what I'd done wrong, what I could do to keep him." She sighed. "But you can't keep them, when they're already halfway out the door. And I hadn't done anything wrong," she added firmly. "And neither have you."

"I-I think I'm holding her back. There's so much she can do, I can't even imagine what kind of limits she might have."

Joyce frowned. "Are you frightened of her?"

"No, of course-" Tara heard the lie. "Not of her. For her. She doesn't understand that there could be anything more powerful than her."

"I don't know what to say about the magic," Joyce sighed. "You could ask her about Amy. Maybe it is just the magic."

"She laughs and says there's nothing to worry about. She-she acts like I don't know what I'm talking about!" Tara blinked, startled by her sudden anger.

Joyce smiled behind her tea cup. "Where instead you've been studying these things for your entire life."

"Yes. I have."

"You know, I think that's the first time I've seen you angry."

"I was always taught that a soft answer turneth away wrath."

Joyce's smile was a little bitter. "Don't make waves, be a nice, quiet woman, never show something upsets you."

Tara remembered her family. "Anger rarely makes things better."

"And sometimes people take advantage of the fact that someone doesn't stand up for themselves. Surely there is something that will make you stand up and say No."

Abuse of the helpless, abuse of power . . . Tara remembered her quiet mother finding a wounded deer in the woods, apparently shot by a hunter who hadn't bothered to track the animal after it ran off. She had slit the poor thing's throat, then driven into town to the bar where the hunters gathered, stood in the middle of the room, and told every single one of them at the top of her voice what she thought of people with guns who didn't care about the animals that suffered from their laziness. Half the room applauded, while the other half pulled down their camo hats and didn't meet anyone's eyes. Tara had been in awe when her mother came home and told the tale.

And she remembered her father yelling about how her mother had humiliated him. And her mother calmly saying she would do it again.

Joyce reached over and patted her hand. "It's not easy. But sometimes it's what you have to do." She pulled the tea cosy off the pot. "Would you like some more?"

"Yes, please. And some more gingerbread, please?"

"Of course."

* * *

Willow looked around Amy's new apartment as Amy went to find her coat. "This is such a nice place. I'm surprised you were able to get in here, I heard there was a waiting list."

Amy grinned at her. "Well, an opening just happened to come up when I was in the office, and it just took a little charm to get the manager to agree to rent to me."

Willow thought she could make a good guess as to what kind of charm Amy meant, but, really, jumping line for a nice place to live didn't seem too bad. "So the paperwork we put together for you was good enough?"

"More than. You did a great job with them."

Willow beamed. "What happened to your house?"

"Oh, I sold it. It was more than I wanted to take care of anyway."

"So you should be OK for rent for a while, then."

Amy paused, then smiled. "Yeah, I'm good for rent." She pulled on her coat and grabbed her bag. "Let's get out on the town and see what's going on."

They got into Amy's new car, and she headed towards the river.

"Where are we going?" Willow asked.

"There's a book store I've heard about, wonderful esoteric things, I've been wanting to check it out."

"Ooo, book store!"

As they drove into the neighborhood on the other side of the river warehouses, Amy glanced at Willow. "Have you ever been in this part of town?"

"I've been to Willy's a couple of times." She preened a little at Amy's look of surprise. "Have you been here before?"

Amy shrugged. "Once or twice. There's a little grocery store a block over that has really fresh things you can use for spell ingredients."

"Oh, that's a good idea. Anya won't carry anything that has to be refrigerated, and dried grin'gk eggs just aren't as good."

The bookstore was just inside an alley, and Amy parked on the street. As she locked the car, she put a finger on the roof and whispered. A web of sparks flared over the vehicle, then faded.

Willow cocked her head. "Anti-theft charm?"

"Yep."

A pleasant little bell rang as they entered the shop. The place smelled of cinnamon, and a holly garland hung along the fireplace mantle.

"Be right there!" called a frail voice from behind a curtain on the far side of the room.

"Take your time!" Amy called back.

Willow went up to the bookshelves, entranced. It looked like all the human languages were represented, English, something in a Cyrillic script, Greek, so many others. Intermingled with those were many in alphabets she didn't recognize. She pulled down one with a title that almost looked like Morse Code and turned it in her hands, wondering which was was up.

"I provide a translation service for a small additional fee," said a cheerful voice at her elbow. She squeaked and jumped. The small elderly man next to her smiled kindly. "So sorry to startle you," he said. "You may call me Doc."

"Um, hi, uh, Doc." She blushed and looked back at the book she was clutching. "What language is this?"

Doc took the book from her and rotated it 90 degrees before handing it back to her. "The courtly language of the Keemple tribe. They're very interested in the uses of butter."

"Butter?"

"Cow butter, sheep butter, human butter, Fyarl butter-if it has a trace of mammalian heritage, the Keemple will make butter and see what it does." Doc smiled and patted the book. "There are pictures."

"Euw." Willow carefully put the book back on the shelf.

Amy came up, turning pages in another book. "Is this one in Spanish or in Latin?"

Doc peered at a page. "Both, actually, or rather a combination of the two. That book came to America in the library of an hidalgo who arrived in 1683. He was rumored to be a sorcerer, and there are tales that he worked with the shamans of the local tribes."

Willow looked around in delight. "Oh, this is a wonderful place. Giles would love it here."

"Giles . . ." Amy said. "Oh, Mr. Giles, the high school librarian?"

"Yeah, him! He used to run the magic shop downtown, until . . ."

Amy winced. "Something killed him?"

"Well, yes, technically, I guess. He's a vampire now."

Doc took a slow step backwards. "Would this be the high school librarian who was the Slayer's Watcher?"

"Uh huh."

"You know Ripper."

"Ripper?" Amy repeated, blinking.

Willow shrugged, trying to be casual and cool about it. "He's been teaching me magic."

Amy frowned. "I remember him and my mother. I thought he said he'd never done magic before."

"I think that was a fib, more like it was the first time he'd done magic in a long time. He and his friends summoned demons when they were young."

Doc snorted. "And how many of them survived it?"

"Oh, um, two."

"Yes, it's no big trick to summon a demon. The trick is to make it go away without taking your soul with it." He bustled over to another wall of shelves. "But you might be interested in this, The Compleat Guide to Necromancy, very useful knowledge if you're consorting with the undead."

Amy stepped closer to Willow. "You're learning magic from a vampire?"

Willow shrugged. "I learned some before he was a vampire, too."

"He always seemed kind of stuffy, before."

"Oh, he's not stuffy anymore."

"I bet he isn't." She looked thoughtful. "Do you-think he would mind if you introduced me to him? The new him?"

"I think he'd be delighted! He always worried about you, the old you, the, um . . ."

Amy smiled. "The four-footed me?"

"Yeah. That you. I think he'd be happy to see you'd gotten better."

"And I would love to see what a vampire wizard could show me."


End file.
